Stats on Long Marriages

by Courtney Mroch | More from this Blogger

07 Mar 2008 10:18 AM

Around the same time she sent me a link that resulted in the article Long Marriages: This Family Knows How to Do It, Jade "The Muse" Walker (as I think I'll now start calling her) also tipped me off to another story about long marriages.

This one wasn't so much an article though. It was posted on a blog called "Kristen's Brooklyn, NY Blog" and was an invitation. As Jade put it, "Now that's what I call an Exclusive party."

It certainly was.

A man named Marty Markowitz, who's apparently the Brooklyn Borough President, and his wife hosted an event to celebrate Brooklyn couples married 50 years or more this past Valentine's Day. That was certainly a neat and novel idea!

Between that and Jade's comment on my above-referenced blog about being curious to see the stats on who works and who doesn't, it got me to thinking. We hear over and over how about half of all marriages end in divorce, but what about the ones that don't? How common is it for people to make it to their Golden Anniversaries? (If death doesn't part them first, that is.)

I found a document from the U.S. Census Bureau issued in February 2002 called Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 1996 by Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields that presented some interesting data. (Though it didn't exactly answer either Jade's question or mine.)

The "Cohorts" Studied

The report classed people by what they called "cohorts," or people born during a specified time period. The ones they compiled data for were Group I (born 1925-1934), Group II (born 1945-1954), and Group III (born 1955-1964). There were definite differences between each group.

"Ever Married"

Another term used throughout the report was "ever married." The data was based on people who had ever been married at least once.

Marrying Later

Group I: By the time they hit 30, the percentage of men "ever married" was 85 percent, 92 percent for women.

Group III: By the time they hit 30, the percentage of men and women "ever married" dropped drastically for their former cohort's percentage --69 percent for men and 79 percent for women.

While it became a trend to hold off on marriage in later years, the report showed most people would marry.

Marriages Aren't Lasting as Long

A different approach was used to present the data on longevity of marriages. It wasn't examined by cohorts but by year married, from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Basically, 90 percent of those married from 1945-1949 reached their 10th anniversary. It dropped to 73 percent for those married 1980-1984.

Numbers also went down for 30th anniversaries: 70 percent made it from the 1945-1949 era, but for the 1950-1964 batch only 55 percent celebrated their Pearl Anniversary.

But it's important to note that the trend for not staying married as long as those in Group I isn't entirely due to higher divorce rates (although that is a contributing factor). It also has to do with people choosing to marry later in life.

Courtney Mroch writes about animals great and small in Pets and the harmony and strife that encompasses married life in Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.

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Learn more about Courtney Mroch

Courtney Mroch is a wife, a proud pet parent, and a writer. She's been with her husband, high school sweetheart Wayne Pryor, over 20 years, married 11 of those. She's "mom" to Mr. Meow, a.k.

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Heidi (5269) 07 Mar 2008 11:14 AM

It's funny you mention Golden Anniversaries--2 weeks from today my in-laws will be celebrating theirs!

We've having a party for them in 3 weeks and among the guests will be their 3 kids, 5 grandkids, and their great-granddaughter! What a legacy they've passed on! :)

Courtney Mroch (9169) 07 Mar 2008 11:18 AM

OH, WOW, CONGRATULATIONS TO THEM! That is some kind of a great legacy. Thanks for sharing such a happy note. I hope your party is a BLAST! That definitely deserves a party!