Know what the number means
Understand crude divorce rates, current marital status, marriage cohorts, households, uncertainty and the denominators behind relationship statistics.
One question. The right measure.
What are we counting?
Why these numbers cannot replace one another
Two people can report the same marriage. A household can contain people beyond a couple. A recorded wedding can involve visitors. Each measure needs its own unit, population and geographic definition.
Four different divorce numbers
| Measure | What it describes |
|---|---|
| Crude divorce rate | Annual recorded divorces per 1,000 total residents in a reporting area. |
| Married-population rate | A source-defined annual rate using a specified married population. |
| Currently divorced share | People currently in that marital-status category divided by the specified resident population. |
| Cohort dissolution percentage | Marriages from a formation cohort ending in divorce by a stated anniversary, subject to source assumptions. |
People, couples, households and events
A person is an individual respondent or resident. A couple is a partnership unit. A household is a living arrangement. A legal event is a recorded marriage or divorce. None can silently replace another.
Median and mean
A median is the middle of a distribution; a mean is its arithmetic average. ACS median age at first marriage is not interchangeable with Eurostat mean age at first marriage.
Unmarried is not unpartnered
Someone who has never married may be cohabiting or in a relationship. Someone currently unmarried may have been married before. Neither status establishes whether they are seeking a partner.
Uncertainty and gaps
An ACS margin of error quantifies sampling uncertainty at the stated confidence level. It does not measure every source of error. A missing observation is not zero. A methodological break indicates that the meaning or collection of a series changed.
See methods and source definitions for the underlying documentation.