Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Divorce is becoming increasingly common amongst all age group, races, genders, and status. According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 1 in 5 adults has ever divorced and first marriages that result in divorce on average last about eight years. Marital relationships are affected by social and economic events, as well as by changes in cultural attitudes and behaviors. Changes in the relationship of marriage and divorce can then affect family life and other daily interactions.
A rare data source, The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which supplies a complete look at both current and past marriage and divorce behaviors of men and women in the United States. The data contained a detailed marital history for men and women of all ages, plus it included thorough information about the characteristics of adults, their household environment, and with whom they live.
Data was gathered from individuals who just had a marital event, the percentage of currently married couples who have reached their fiftieth anniversary, the percentage of men and women who have ever divorced, or the proportion of recent marriages that both the bride and groom were marrying for the first time. SIPP marital history is fielded about every five years, with the most recent survey being done in 2001. In 2001, data was obtained from men and women 15-years and older in roughly 30,000 households. In the sample, 56,574 people were asked questions about the number of times he or she had been married, and the month and year of the marital events for the first, second, and most recent marriage.
The survey revealed men who were born in 1935 to 1939 that by the age of twenty-five years old 66.6 percent had been married. In the same age group, only 4 percent were divorced by the age of twenty-five; however, by the age of fifty-five 32 percent had divorced. In those men married two or more times by the age of fifty-five, 28.8 percent had...