Who Has The Best Chance at a 20+ Year Marriage?
I just discovered the secret to a lasting marriage, without ever being hitched.
Today, out of wedlock babies and mothers are no longer adorned with scarlet letters; single moms and dads successfully juggling children and jobs are highly respected individuals; celebrity marriages are expected to fail, not last. But while happily waving “buh-bye” to some of America’s traditional values and welcoming divorce out of taboo, marriage is here to stay- and we all want ours to last.
The last point is particularly interesting, as Phoenix divorce attorney Scott Stewart points me to some of the latest statistics on American marriage. About half of all marriages don’t last forever- forever meaning at least 20 years, according to the latest PEW Research.
But that’s old news, I’ve been spewing that fact around since my college (single) roommates began adding a million too many pins to their “Future Wedding” Pinterest boards. The real news here, again, is the secret to a lasting marriage- a college educated wife.
College-educated women have almost an eight in ten chance of a marriage lasting longer than 20 years; 78 percent of women with Bachelor’s degrees who married for the first time between 2006 and 2010 can expect their marriages to survive the two decade milestone. So, statistically speaking, my crazed, wedding-pinning friends are ideal marriage material.
However, only 40 percent of women with a high school education or less married within that same time frame can expect a marriage lasting two decades.
Not shocked by this? Understandable- college-educated people tend to marry later in life and are more financially stable, two common “factors” in divorce. But the second secret to marriage is for those who don’t shock easily (and a win for my old school grandma).
Women who live with their boyfriends before saying “I do” have a 46 percent chance at a long-term marriage, compared to a 57 percent chance of those who wait. Being engaged doesn’t put you in the over 50 percent club, either.
As a college-educated woman who would never consider marriage prior to living with my significant other, that is shocking. Those numbers challenge my, what I thought was a, logistical thought process of making sure you can actually live with your partner before making it legally binding.
Notice, though, I said women who live with their boyfriends. Overall, men who don’t move in with their partner prior to marriage have a 60 percent chance of lasting 20 years. But when they can no longer resist playing house, engagement matters. Men who live with their fiancées have a 57 percent of chance at celebrating a 20th anniversary; But, men who live with their girlfriends only have a 46 percent chance.
But the ultimate cliffhanger to this apparent gambling addiction called marriage is why college-educated women and couples who don’t live together have such a greater chance at a lasting marriage. And a cliffhanger that shall remain.
All the above data is from the National Center for Health Statistics, which based their estimates off a system resembling the life expectancy scale and assumes marriage patterns in the future will follow today’s patterns. However, they did not investigate why certain marriages lasted longer than others.
So with that final thought, perhaps I don’t know the true secret to a lasting marriage, but I did inform you of ways to improve the odds.
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