Haven't been able to find any firm numbers on this. So, here's my guess:
Now the guessing and assumptions start: alimony for 1/2 the length of the marriage, so let's call that 4 years. It varies wildly. So that means that ever 4 years a new group of 400,000 woman would be receiving alimony. So with women living to 80, let's call it 60 years, 60/4 = 15 sets. 15*400,000 = 6 million. So out of the 165 million women, 142 million will get married at some point. 6 million will get alimony, that's 4.2% of all women in the country.
However, that doesn't match up with "25% of divorces get spousal support in the 60s, and 10% do now" (source https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/percentage-of-men-awarded-spousal-support-increasing )
Unless there's 600,000 women out there right now not admitting that they get alimony. Then the math would be a lot closer.
And this statistic doesn't even touch the idea of "among men WHO COULD PAY, how many are paying alimony?" As I have met some guys who got divorced who "got out clean". But most of those guys were still paying off their car, living in an apartment, and had no investments.
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