Marco Esquandolas said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-years-of-marriage-and-divorce-in-the-united-states-in-one-chart/?utm_term=.701ce7b4a7e1
As the chart shows, marriage rates have declined steadily since the 1980s. Today they are lower than any other time since 1870, including during the Great Depression. However, divorce rates today are actually slightly down compared with the 1970s, '80s and '90s on a per capita basis.
In addition, you can see that events like World War I, World War II and the Great Depression all had a significant impact on marriage and divorce rates.
Couples rushed to the altar before the wars started, as well as at their conclusion. As Olson notes, divorces also spiked after the conclusion of WWII, perhaps because some couples who had married rashly before the war realized their differences.
The chart also shows an obvious drop in marriage rates during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fewer jobs and less economic stability appears to be a popular reason for not forming new families a trend we also saw during the Great Recession.
Several problems:
A) This is not a graph of causation. A spike in marriage does not correspond with a spike in divorce, just like a drop in marriage rates doesn't indicate a larger drop in divorce rates is related. So concluding that a lower per capita divorce rate is reflective of greater cobabitating is inconclusive. The old stat about half of marriages ending in divorce is based on marriages and divorces in a year, not who, or how long they were married. Given that some who divorce are serial offenders the stats are likely skewed on both ends.
B) There are other equally reasonable explanations, such as soldiers coming back with PTSD and checking out like after the civil war. Or coming back changed after watching the horrors of the battlefield. WWII altered the face of Europe, that we would escape unscathed with so many young men going to fight as well isn't reasonable.
C) These reflect people's behavior but isn't a discussion of the underlying truth of which is best or preferable.
D) People who cohabitate don't equate their breakup to a marriage, when the reality is that's how they treat it. That's the whole point of a 'test drive'. Let's be married briefly without a permanent entanglement and we'll split without too much pain from divvying up retirement and bank accounts or losing insurance. We'll see what we'd normally learn in the first year of a marriage and then decide. Break ups of this nature should be treated as a divorce, not dating. That's not to say it can't work out like Kurt but if they were treated equally, since that is freely admitted as the whole point, cohabitation would (rightly) look a hell of a lot worse. It relies on sleight of hand to convince that it's not.
