In every survey on the quality of life, health, dieting, exercise, education and now divorce, the American South fares poorly.
What does it mean when the "Bible Belt," a place revered for its family values, leads the nation in divorce?
The US Census Bureau’s latest divorce stats prove the South, starting with Alabama and Arkansas, have the highest divorce rates in the nation. Likewise, Alabama and Arkansas lead the nation in the least number of college graduates, highest rates of obesity, teen pregnancy and students with the lowest achievement scores from kindergarten through senior year.
A family demographer from the Census Bureau, Diana Elliot, said divorce rates in the South are higher because marriage rates are higher in the South. In the Northeast first marriages tend to be delayed and marriages rates are also lower, which translates to fewer divorces. Education among people with high school diplomas or less is also a major contributing factor to high divorce rates in the American South.
Nationally, people under 30 on average have the highest rates of divorce, which lends to the nation’s inflated divorce rates. Marriages between partners age 20-24 have divorce rates as high as 38 percent for men and 36 for women. Marriages among 25 – 29 year olds have a divorce rate between 16 percent for women and 22 percent for men. 27 percent of women who marry at ages 20 and younger experience divorce.
Divorce rates quell in marriages of older people. 8.5 percent of women between the ages of 30 – 34 are divorced. 5.1 percent between 35 – 39 are divorced. 11 percent of 30 – 34 year old males are divorced while 6.5 percent of males 35 – 39 are divorced.
Couples without children, tend to divorce at 66 percent while couples with children divorce at 40 percent. Overall, divorce rates in the US are inflated because young people divorce twice as fast as people in their twenties divorce twice as fast people in the thirties.
In 2009, men and women in the South had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than in other parts of the country. For every 1,000 marriages 10.2 men were divorced and 11.1 women divorced. Nationally, the divorce rate was 9.2 for women and 9.7 for men.
Women in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia had higher than average divorce rates. But Connecticut, Massachussetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania had divorce rates for men between 6.1 and 8.5.
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania also reported lower than average divorce rates for women ranging from 6.0 – 8.9. In the northeast, men and women had average rates of divorce at 7.2 and 7.5 per every 1,000.
Here are other findings from the report “Marital Events of Americans: 2009”:
• National rates of marriage in the past 12 months were 19.1 for men and 17.6 for women. There were 3.5 instances of widowhood for men and 7.8 for women, per every 1,000 people.
• Children living with a parent who divorced in 2009 were more likely to live in a household headed by their mother (75 percent) than in a household headed by their father (25 percent). Additionally, children living with a parent who divorced in 2009 were more likely to be in a household below the poverty level (28 percent) compared with other children (19 percent), and they were more likely to live in a rented home (53 percent) compared with other children (36 percent).
• The economic well-being of those who experienced a recent marital event differed.
• Women who divorced in the past 12 months were more likely to receive public assistance than recently divorced men (23 percent and 15 percent).
• Women who divorced in the past 12 months reported less household income than recently divorced men. For example, 27 percent of women who divorced in the past 12 months had less than $25,000 in annual household income compared with 17 percent of recently divorced men.
• Similarly, women who divorced in the past 12 months were more likely than recently divorced men to be in poverty (22 percent compared with 11 percent).
• Women who divorced in the past 12 months were more likely to be living in a multigenerational household -- 11 percent of such women, compared with 5 percent of men.
• Thirteen states had median durations for second marriages for women below the U.S. median of 14.5 years. This included six states in the Northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont) ranging from 13.1 to 13.6 years.
• Among those widowed in the last year, 77 percent of men and 73 percent of women were white alone, non-Hispanic.
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