If you’re like me, you might not have realized that Utah is a great place to be married. For a long time I actually thought that the opposite was true.
I’d always been disheartened by the ubiquitous statement that “half of all marriage end in divorce,” and didn’t help to learn that according to state statistics, Utah’s divorce rate has been higher than the national average for nearly ever one of the last 68 years (since 1940, Utah beat the national average only in 1976 & 1998. We tied the nation in the 4 years from 1994-1997).
To me, that meant that Utah’s marriages were especially vulnerable. I was wrong.
First off, there’s good news from the statistics themselves. According to preliminary data I obtained from the Department of Vital Statistics, Utah’s divorce rate in 2007 reached its lowest point in 40 years at 3.5 divorces per thousand people (you’d need to go back to 1965 to get a lower rate).
It’s great news, but not once you study the numbers, it’s not exactly surprising. Overall, the divorce rate has been falling at a fairly steady rate since 1981 (It’s dropped 36% since that high point). It also mirrors the national trend.
No one is really sure why the rate is falling, but the simplest answer seems to be that in both Utah and across the nation, a lower percentage of people are getting married (Utah is down 23% since 1981, the U.S. is down at least 28%). Fewer marriages may lead to few divorces. But the simple explanation doesn’t come close to giving us the full picture, especially in Utah.
I’ll explain why in my next post.
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