If you're already divorced, or currently going through a divorce, and children are involved, you might also want to read our article on child support payments.

We thank the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, of the US Census Bureau in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, Population Division, for permission to use their article on marriage and divorce statistics: Kreider, Rose M., 2005. Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces: 2001. Current Population Reports, P70-97. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC.

• Men and women born in the early 1970s married at older ages on average than those born in the late 1930s.
• Roughly 1 in 5 adults has ever divorced.
• Men who had ever divorced are more likely to be currently married than ever-divorced women.
• Asian and Pacific Islander men and women had a higher age at first marriage than other groups.
• First marriages that end in divorce last about 8 years, on average.
• Sixty-two percent of couples married in the previous year involved brides and grooms who were both entering their first marriage.
• Men who divorced from their first marriage and have not remarried have fewer children than men who remained married and those who divorced and subsequently remarried.

What are the statistics on how long marriages last and how quickly do people remarry? The following table, profiling the marital experience of the population as of 2001, shows that first marriages that ended in divorce lasted a median of 8 years for men and women overall. The median time from marriage to separation was shorter: about 7 years.

This table also shows the median duration of time between the divorce from a first marriage and a second marriage. Half of the men and women in all of the race and Hispanic-origin groups who remarried after divorcing from their first marriage did so within about 3 to 4 years. The median duration of second marriages that ended in divorce was about the same as for first marriages for women, at 8 years, but longer for men at 9 years.

Another way to look at the stability of first marriages is to consider at what time during the marriage the risk of divorce is likely to be high. This figure shows the percentage of women who divorced from their first marriage each year by the duration of the first marriage. Separate lines are graphed for all ever-married women, women married before 1970, and women married from 1970 through 2001. The line for all ever-married women falls between the lines that graph the two broad marriage cohorts, since it is essentially composed of these two groups of women combined, but it masks the contrast in marital patterns experienced by people who married before or after 1970. It should be noted that the data shown for all ever-married women and for women married 1970 to 2001 are based on partial experience. For example, a woman first married in 1985 had been exposed to the possibility of divorce for only 16 years by 2001.

The line indicating the annual percentage divorced from the first marriage at each year of marriage for women who married before 1970 is relatively flat compared with the line indicating the percentage divorced for women who married from 1970 to 2001. For the latter group, the percentage divorcing each year was about 4 percent for years 5 through 8, and was lower than 4 percent for subsequent years.

While previous sections examined the intervals between different marital events among people who had experienced a marital disruption by 2001, this section looks at the duration of the most recent marriage for couples who were currently married at the time of the survey in 2001. This table shows the number and percentage of married couples in 2001 who had reached various anniversaries. In 2001, 81 percent of all currently married couples had achieved at least their fifth anniversary, 53 percent had been married at least 15 years, and 33 percent had reached their twenty-fifth anniversary. A small percentage of currently married couples had passed their golden (fiftieth) wedding anniversary—6 percent.

The percentage reaching particular anniversaries was generally lower for Black, Asian, and Hispanic women than for non-Hispanic White women. Higher rates of divorce for Blacks and the more youthful age distribution for Hispanics and Asians contribute to this difference.

This table takes a more detailed look at the number of times wives and husbands had been married when surveyed in 2001. While both spouses were in their first marriage in 70 percent of all currently married couples in 2001, this situation occurred for just 62 percent of the couples who had married within the previous year. Seven percent of all currently married couples involved a wife who was in her second marriage and a husband who was in his first marriage, while another 8 percent of all currently married couples involved a husband who was in his second marriage and a wife who was in her first marriage. Eight percent of both currently married couples and couples married within the previous year involved spouses who were both in their second marriage. A very small percentage of all currently married couples (1 percent) comprised a husband and wife who had both been married 3 or more times.

Data on the characteristics of people with recent marital events can provide a profile of people after their transition from one marital status to another. For example, what is the economic situation of recently divorced men and women, or what age groups are more likely to experience various marital events?

The majority of men and women recently widowed are older than most of the men and women who had other marital events. Age is also especially important when looking at employment status, housing tenure, and family status. While the median age of men and women who recently married, divorced, or separated was under 50 years, the median age of the men and women who were widowed in the last year was 74 years for men and 71 years for women (See Table).

The majority of recently married men and women were 15 to 34 (69 percent of men and 74 percent of women), with a median age of 30 years for men and 28 years for women. Half or more had at least some college and owned their homes. While about 1 out of 5 recently married men lived with children aged 1 to 17, about one-third of recently married women did.

The majority of recently separated and divorced men and women were 25 to 44. While half or more of these women lived with their own children under 18 (59 percent of separated and 57 percent of divorced women), less than one-quarter of recently separated or divorced men (14 percent of those separated and 17 percent of those divorced) lived with their own children under 18. Thirteen percent of recently separated men were below the poverty level compared with 23 percent of recently separated women. While 15 percent of recently divorced men lived in households in which someone received noncash public assistance, 34 percent of recently divorced women or someone in their household received noncash public assistance. The data shows that marital disruption results in much poorer economic circumstances for women than for men.

These two figures show, separately for men and women, the percent distribution of the number of children born to those who are still in their first marriage compared with those who were divorced or those who had divorced and remarried. Data are shown only for men and women 45 and over because the majority of childbearing is completed before age 45.19 Men who divorced from their first marriage and have not remarried are more likely to be childless (22 percent) than either those who remained in their first marriage or those who remarried (about 10 percent each). Similarly, the percentage of women who are childless is highest for those who remained divorced from their first marriage (17 percent), compared with those who are still in their first marriage (8 percent) and those who remarried (10 percent). These numbers show that the percentage of women still in their first marriage who are childless does not differ statistically from the percentage of remarried women who are childless.

Note: "Now divorced" includes those who had a first marriage that ended in divorce, and who have not remarried. "Now remarried" includes those who had a first marriage that ended in divorce, and who remarried and are still in their second marriage.