'Indy Timeline' of Upcoming Events New Barna Divorce Stats Tell A Different Story
Most Americans get married at some point in their life: just one out of five adults (22%) has never been married. Among those who have said their wedding vows, one out of three have been divorced at least once, according to a new study from The Barna Group.
Marriage Is the Norm
In addition to finding that four out of every five adults (78%) have been married at least once, the Barna study revealed that an even higher proportion of born again Christians (84%) tie the knot. That eclipses the proportion among people aligned with non-Christian faiths (74%) and among atheists and agnostics (65%).
Divorce Is Widespread
Among adults who have been married, the study discovered that one-third (33%) have experienced at least one divorce. That means that among all Americans 18 years of age or older, whether they have been married or not, 25% have gone through a marital split.
The study showed that the percentage of adults who have been married and divorced varies from segment to segment. For instance, the groups with the most prolific experience of marriage ending in divorce are downscale adults (39%), Baby Boomers (38%), those aligned with a non-Christian faith (38%), African-Americans (36%), and people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters (37%).
Among the population segments with the lowest likelihood of having been divorced subsequent to marriage are Catholics (28%), evangelicals (26%), upscale adults (22%), Asians (20%) and those who deem themselves to be conservative on social and political matters (28%).
[continued at Barna.org]***********************
IndyChristian Ed. Note: We can hope this will now officially put an end to the well traveled 'evangelical meme'. But Barna's new format -- comparing only the marrieds this time (duh) -- still focuses on the 'ever-divorced' statistic... which of course goes up with age (much like an 'ever-had-cancer' statistic). Thus differences in average-age between the various groups cited above, are still unaccounted-for. That is, if evangelicals tend to be older than non-evangelicals -- and evidence suggests they are -- then naturally they'll fare worse in an age-biased metric. Moreover, the study still doesn't address duration of the marriages. Evidence suggests evangelical marriages tend to last longer as well. Thus if Barna were to instead measure the divorce-rate as an annualized metric -- ie, did-you-get-a-divorce-this-year -- evangelicals would conceivably show a very large distinction from the non-evangelical divorce-rate. And of course, the study doesn't even begin to address 'live-in & break-up' situations. Rather, it only includes those who actually tie the marital knot... again, more likely to be evangelical than non-evangelical.
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Labels: barna, divorce, evangelical, evangelicals, families, family, marriage, meme, research
posted by IndyChristian @ 8:12 AM
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