Atheists have lowest divorce rate. Evangelical Christians have highest divorce rates.

[Japher]

Atheists are more likely to kill their spouse and become widowers than evangelical christians - FACT!

[Q Classic]

Err, Richard Dawkins is reasonable...?

More so than Ted Haggard.

[Theben]

When the Rapture occurs and only one member of a couple goes upstairs, does that count as a divorce?

[Elok]

The explanation is obvious, and mentioned right at the top of the source Oerdin posted; in Western society, it's become the norm for couples to live together for some time without getting married, if they get married at all. My atheist brother's "wife" is only his wife because Colorado common-law calls you married if you've been cohabiting for a certain length of time. Anyway, many people don't tie the knot officially until they've already learned that they can live together happily. But, since cohabitation is a no-no among Christians, we don't get that "advantage." You could crow about this, I guess, but the flip side is that, if you sleep with your wife for three years before you marry her, your marriage is basically a license to file taxes together, with no real meaning beyond that save what you choose to believe. You undergo a ceremony and go back to living the exact same way you lived before.

Also, when conservative Xian teenagers, encouraged by their parents' moronic attitudes towards sex education, get each other pregnant, a wedding is the normal result. Marriages based on sixteen-year-olds' hormonal drives seldom last. But I imagine plenty of young secular couples stay together when they get knocked up, "for the baby's sake." When they later split up, it's just a breakup, not a divorce.

It's not really a matter of Christian husbands beating or cheating or being gay or whatever. At least not necessarily. The simpler explanation is a statistical hiccup caused primarily by differing subcultural norms.

[Asher]

In other words, Christians are reckless.

[Elok]

Gays have higher rates of HIV infection than straights. In other words, Gays are filthy disease-carriers.

[Ben Kenobi]

Actually co-habitation makes you more rather then less likely to break up.

[Asher]

Christian Gays are the worst. fact.

[Asher]

Actually co-habitation makes you more rather then less likely to break up.

Actually having a monkey in the house causes you to regrow hair and a third testicle.

[MrFun]

Christian Gays are the worst. fact.

I feel your love, man!

[rah]

Actually co-habitation makes you more rather then less likely to break up.

That relationship may not be as solid as once thought.

http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases/economists-feb-22-1999.html

U.Va. Economists Challenge Notion That Living Together Before Marriage Leads To Divorce

Feb. 22, 1999 -- Does cohabitation before marriage make it more likely or less likely that couples will divorce? Recent research has found that couples who live together before marrying are more likely than others to divorce.

But economists at the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan are challenging recent interpretations that cohabitation prior to marriage is the actual cause of the increased likelihood of divorce. They have created a mathematical model that contradicts a cause-and-effect relationship suggested by a recently published study of the National Marriage Project based at Rutgers University.

The U.Va.-Michigan study, published on the Internet by the Society of Labor Economists' Labor and Population Economics Seminars, suggests that couples who live together before marriage are going through a period of learning about each other and are simply different from those who know right away that they want to marry.

And far from increasing the divorce rate, the learning period might actually prevent many later divorces, according to the authors of the new study, "Cohabitation, Marriage and Divorce in a Model of Match Quality."

"Couples who get married without an intervening period of cohabitation have gotten early signals that they have a very good match," says Steven Stern, professor of economics at U.Va. and one of the co-authors of the new study.

"Others use a cohabitation period to learn more about their partners," Stern says. "If, once they've learned more, they find they have a good match, they marry; otherwise, they separate without incurring large divorce costs. On average, their matches are not as good and they have higher divorce rates."

"But it's not cohabitation that causes divorce," Stern emphasizes. "Rather, the people who cohabit are simply different from those who marry right away; their matches overall tend not to be as good. In fact, our study suggests that if there were less of a stigma associated with cohabitation and more people lived together before marriage, the divorce rate would fall because everyone would learn more about their partners' annoying habits before tying the knot."

Stern completed the study with co-authors Michael Brien, an economist at U.Va. who is on leave this year as a visiting scholar at the Social Security Administration, and Lee Lillard, an economist at the University of Michigan.

The authors are among social scientists nationwide who have turned their attention to analyzing the increasing number of couples choosing to live together outside of marriage. Stern, Brien and Lillard sought to understand this social trend by constructing an economic model that factors in the quality of relationships. The theoretical model produced results that are consistent with current data on marriage and divorce, the researchers said. The divorce rate has been stable since 1980, while the number of couples living together outside of marriage has been increasing.

In addition to helping explain the link between cohabitation and divorce, their research also suggests that:

1) Modest government policies to give people more incentive to marry, such as reducing the "marriage penalty" in the U.S. tax code or offering tax credits for children, have small effects on marriage and divorce rates;

2) Divorce rates decline with the duration of a marriage, but much of that is explained by the effect of other, unobserved differences among couples, such as religious beliefs, which tend to preserve the good matches;

3) Demographic characteristics, such as race, education and religion, significantly affect couples' decisions to start and end relationships.

A copy of this research is available at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~sns5...ctstf/bls.html.



But what can you expect from economists. But it again shows that many factors play into things and looking at just one item may lead to faulty analysis.

[Wezil]

Actually having a monkey in the house causes you to regrow hair and a third testicle.

Good advice.

I'm on it.

[Patroklos]

It also depends on when you get divorced. A good portion of evangical Christians don't become so until later in life. Is the question "have you ever been divorced" or "have you gotten a divorce as a evangical Christian?"

The same is true for athiets, many don't cast off religion unitl their later life.

[Martin Gühmann]

Err, Richard Dawkins is reasonable...?

What's wrong with him? Oh by the Flying Spaghetti Monster how could I forget, there is no imaginary invisible magic man spooking inside his head.

-Martin

[Lorizael]

What's wrong with him? Oh by the Flying Spaghetti Monster how could I forget, there is no imaginary invisible magic man spooking inside his head.

-Martin

No, what's wrong with Richard Dawkins is that he's a loud-mouthed loon who makes his side look bad.