[StBernard] Building better (off topic)

[Westley Annis]

I did a google on divorce rates and found this:

. PROJECTION/PREDICTION. This is the Census Bureau's often-cited "50%" rate,
the proportion of marriages taking place right now that will eventually
divorce, which has since been revised downward to roughly 43% by the
National Center for Health Statistics but was moved back up to around 50% by
the Census Bureau in 2002, with even more ifs ands and buts than usual. Most
recently, according to the New York Times, it has been revised downward to
just over 40%.

One of the best explanations of what is an accurate prediction for this
statistic, and of the limits of divorce statistics, is an April, 2005 New
York Times article, "Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think
<http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html> ."


This kind of thing is probably the best estimate statisticians can come up
with, but it is only a prediction of how many people currently entering
their first marriages will ever get divorced. It is a very rough estimate
even if current trends continue unchanged, but it is also subject to change
if divorce becomes more or less popular or available. For a more detailed
exploration of the nature of this and other divorce rates, see messages on
"Divorce Statistics and Interpretation" by Scott Stanley and Paul Amato,
November, 1998 <http://www.smartmarriages.com/divorcestats.html> 

Here is an excerpt from the Census Bureau report, with a link to the full
report:

"The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report which
found that 43
percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years. The
study is based on
the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative sample of
women age 15 to
44 in 1995. Bramlett, Matthew and William Mosher. "First marriage
dissolution, divorce, and
remariage: United States," Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics;
No.323. Hyattsville
MD: National Center for Health Statistics: 2 1.

"Data in the Census report were collected from both men and women, age 15
and over, and a
different methodology was used than in the NCHS report.

"About 50% of first marriages for men under age 45 may end in
divorce, and between 44 and 52% of women's first marriages
may end in divorce for these age groups. The likelihood of a divorce
is lowest for men and women age 60, for whom 36 % of men
and 32 percent of women may divorce from their first marriage by
the end of their lives. A similar statistical exercise was performed in
1975 using marital history data from the Current Population Survey
(CPS). Projections based on those data implied that about one-third of
married persons who were 25 to 35 years old in 1975 would end their
first marriage in divorce.

"This cohort of people, who in 1996 were about 45 to 55 years old, had
already exceeded these projections as about 40% of men and
women in these ages had divorced from their first marriage. Current
projections now indicate that the proportion could be as high as 
50% for persons now in their early forties."
Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, "Number, Timing, and Duration of
Marriages and Divorces: 1996", U.S. Census Bureau Current Population
Reports, February 2002 <http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p70-80.pdf> , p.
18.

Link:   http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html

	-----------------------------------------------------
	Wendy,
	
	Not picking on you, but one of my latest pet peeves, especially on
the
	Internet, is throwing out statistics without giving the source
(preferably a
	link directly to the source item and not just a link to the home
page).
	(This is one of the reasons I don't post too many blog entries. The
time
	needed for fact checking can be horrendous at times.)
	
	Who is claiming that $10,000 in solar panels increases a home's
value by
	$20,000 per year?
	
	On a slightly different note, where do you get the statistic that
54% of
	marriages end in divorce?
	
	Westley
	
	-----Original Message-----
	Wes,
	
	
	With concern to solar panels, it increases a house value by $20,000
per
	year, for the $10,000 investment.
	
	
	Wendy