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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26633 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Also more likely to get divorced and try to find a new partner.

Is this true? I don't think this is true. Maybe it's true after controlling for education, but when we look at the most stereotypically Blue people (urbanites with graduate degrees, either in academia or comfortably adjacent to it), the divorce rates are low. I might even suggest that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married.

I'll first note that your comment seems to reinforce my point; the idea that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married goes hand in hand with the idea that your partner becoming less attractive is reasonable grounds for divorce. That's much more of a left wing than right wing perspective on marriage. But you're right! We should find some actual data and check.

Pew found that when it comes to the statement "Couples who are unhappy tend to stay in bad marriages too long" 69% of Democrats agreed compared to 41% of Republicans. That divide gets wider the further to the right or left you go: for Republicans that described themselves as "conservative" (as opposed to "moderate" or "liberal") only 35% agreed, compared to 76% Democrats who described themselves as "liberal".

Of course that's just stated attitudes, what about actual divorce rates? A study from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found that for people who had ever been married at all 41% of Republicans had been divorced compared to 47% of Democrats. They also found that 57% of Republicans are currently married, compared to 40% of Democrats.

Another study found that the divorce rate was higher in red states than blue states, but they also noted that the marriage rate was much higher in red states than blue states which may account for it. A smaller percentage of divorces among a larger number a marriages may mean that Republicans divorce more per capita, but divorce less as a proportion of all married individuals.

divorce rate was higher in red states than blue states

Red states vs blue states is an apples to oranges comparison, because the south is dysfunctional, poor, and very red, and most non-southern red states are very rural.

Huh. That seems pretty dispositive that my impression was just wrong. Thanks for enacting the labor.

Thanks for asking for data. It's easy to armchair philosophize about things that we actually have data for, and I usually forget to check.

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