There is no baby boomer (or silent) generation divorce spike at retirement.
Dalrock | June 29, 2012 | by Dalrock
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There is a common theme in the media suggesting that baby boomers are
divorcing in greater numbers now that they are in or approaching
retirement.  The most recent example I’ve seen is from Casey Dowd
at _Fox Business_ (H/T Empathologicalism
[http://empathological.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/823/]):  Why So Many
Baby Boomers are Getting Divorced
[http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/06/23/why-so-many-baby-boomers-are-getting-divorced/]. 
The breathless headline is accompanied by the obligatory image of an
older woman fed up with her husband.  The actual words need not be
written:

> So long boring loyal dude!

This is all standard fare for those selling divorce.  Rule number one
is you only sell divorce to women.  Women eat this up, which is why
every form of women’s entertainment has divorce fantasy as a
staple.  Selling divorce to men would be in bad taste, as this would
leave fatherless children and more importantly men wouldn’t stand to
be pandered to so shamefully.  There are a number of other rules
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/a-beginners-guide-to-selling-divorce/],
including giving the impression that everyone is doing it
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/the-contagious-nature-of-divorce/],
especially older women.  If you can convince the public that grey
divorce is rampant you can have maximum impact destabilizing and
demoralizing all marriages.  Why stick through difficult times
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/does-divorce-make-people-happy/]
if late life divorce is inevitable?  You may as well quit now.

The problem is the line between news and entertainment is frequently
blurred.  Because of this we have a rash of headlines
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/uk-divorce-rate-data-by-age-per-1000-married-women/]
suggesting there is an explosion in divorce around retirement.  This
is quite simply not the case.  Here is what Mr. Dowd writes in the
_Fox Business_ article:

> The divorce rate among boomers has jumped recently and that number
> is only expected to climb.

He cites statistics from the _National Center for Family & Marriage
Research_ (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University in making this
claim.  With a bit of searching I found these excellent charts*
[http://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-12-05.pdf]
from the NCFMR.  After looking at the data referenced as well as the
working paper
[http://ncfmr.bgsu.edu/pdf/working_papers/file108701.pdf] from the
same group on the topic it is clear that the statement referenced
above is incorrect in _both_ of its assertions.  The divorce rate
among boomers has _fallen_, not increased, and it is expected to fall
further, not climb.  In addition, this and other articles leave the
false impression that late life divorce is relatively common.

As I’ve shown previously and the charts linked above confirm,
divorce is much less common as couples age.  The changes under
discussion are large _percentage_ changes in very small numbers.  For
example, look at the divorce rates per 1,000 married couples age 55-64
in figure one in the chart linked above.  In the US in 1990, there
were roughly** 5 divorces per 1,000 married couples in this age
bracket.  Looking at the same age bracket today, it has doubled to 10
per 1,000 married couples.  This value of 10 is very small compared
to the roughly 30 divorces per 1,000 couples for those now in their
twenties and early thirties.  While there will be a few more grannies
batting their bifocaled eyelashes on the dating scene, this is more of
a trickle than a flood.  You can get a sense of perspective from a
chart I put together using similar but slightly different data than
what the NCFMR shows in the charts linked above.  Here is how divorce
risk changed by age when looking at women in the US in 2009:

More to the point, if you are a boomer your divorce risk has dropped
dramatically over the last 20 years.  You might be wondering how this
could be given the doubling stats I referenced above, but the answer
is simple.  Twenty years ago boomers were twenty years younger and
experiencing much higher divorce rates than they are now.  Here is
what happened to divorce rates for boomers and silents using the NCFMR
Figure 1 data**:

 [https://dalrock.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/boomerdivorcechart1.png]

Here is the data compiled in chart form:

 [https://dalrock.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/boomerdivorcetable1.png]

While there is something interesting happening, there is no jump in
divorce rates for any of the cohorts of boomers and silents measured
in the data referenced.  All cohorts experienced dramatic
_reductions_ in divorce rates during this time, and are expected to
experience more of the same.  What has happened is a bending of the
curve of divorce distribution across time.  I noted the same basic
phenomenon in the UK when considering the divorce implications for
young marriage here
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/are-young-marriages-doomed-to-divorce/]
(see final chart
[https://dalrock.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/uk_divorces_by_age_of_wife_by_decade.jpg]). 
The simplest answer for the US data seems to be that boomers and
silents simply divorce at much higher rates than the generations
before or after them.  As they move through the age brackets, this
would account for making the curve steeper in 1990 and less steep in
2010.  Part of this could be that these cohorts of boomers and
silents divorced and remarried more than previous cohorts did when
they were younger, and second and third marriages have much higher
divorce rates.  At any rate, this is something very different than
the claimed jump in divorce rates as boomers and silents retire.

But a bending curve won’t sell copy, and it won’t create the kind
of “everyone is doing it” sensation which sells divorce.  So
instead Mr. Dowd interviews an “expert” from a firm which sells
divorce services, whispering
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/the-whispers/]:

> Do you think these trends are going to continue? Is the 30-year itch
> the new seven-year itch?

*This data was compiled similarly to the data I compiled myself here
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/why-a-womans-age-at-time-of-marriage-matters-and-what-this-tells-us-about-the-apex-fallacy/]. 
My data is for 2009 and theirs is for 2010 but the two still are
extremely close.

**Their charts don’t have data value labels so I may be slightly off
in reading their values.  However, even if I’m off by one or two
either way it doesn’t change the analysis.

SEE ALSO:  Divorcée Retirement
[https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/divorcee-retirement/]

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Archived from https://theredarchive.com/blog/Dalrock/there-is-no-baby-boomer-or-silent-generation.8098