The age difference between you and your spouse could be more than an interesting piece of trivia brought up during family reunions—it could be a significant factor in predicting your marital happiness and risk of divorce. While there are many aspects of your relationship that may act as predictors of divorce, including financial wealth, the length of time you dated before becoming engaged, and how much money you spend on the wedding, a relevant factor that many people don’t consider is the age difference between spouses. As it turns out, marrying someone your own age might even reduce the risk of divorce.
Marrying Someone Your Own Age Could Reduce Risk of Divorce: Study
According to a recent study by Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon of the Emory University Department of Economics, the closer a couple is in age, the less likely they are to divorce. The study analyzed polling results from over 3,000 married American couples to determine which factors were able to predict marital happiness and success.
Using a multivariate model, the study arrived at numerous conclusions about the elements that affect a marriage. In regards to how the age of two spouses influences their risk of divorce, the study found that there is a significant correlation between wider age gaps and an increased likelihood of divorce, but that even a small age gap could increase a married couple’s odds of breaking up.
The greater the gap in age between spouses, the higher their risk of divorce. Couples with an age difference of 20 years or more have an even worse chance of achieving long-term marital happiness. That’s not to say that couples with drastic age differences can never make it work, but the statistics do demonstrate that they face greater challenges and higher odds of splitting up than individuals who settle down with a partner their own age.
Is that on top of the average 50% divorce rate?
Although almost everyone quotes it, it is not true that 50% of marriages end in divorce. This oft-quoted “fact” seems to have come about because someone looked at the number of marriages and divorces in one calendar year, and saw that there were half as many divorces as marriages in that time-frame: for example, in one year, there were 2 million marriages and 1 million divorces. At first glance, that might like a 50% divorce rate. But that doesn’t take into account the fact that virtually none of the 2 million people who married that year were among the 1 million people who divorced the same year — and also doesn’t take into account the 54 million marriages that already existed. So really, it was an apples-oranges comparison to create the 50% statistic. Regarding this new study, the take-away is that a larger age-gap between spouses correlates with increased risk of divorce when compared to spouses of the same age. The current divorce rate (which is difficult to pin down exactly, since many states, including CA, no longer report this) already includes divorces caused by all of the factors looked at in this study (cost of engagement ring, wedding expenses, age gap, etc.). The study provides insight about the current divorce rate by breaking down the different factors that may increase a couple’s divorce risk, but does not add to or detract from the current rate. See https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/expensive-engagement-ring-increases-odds for more results from the study.
– the editors at Divorce Magazine