8 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
stability between 1990 and 2000, the population of divorced
senior citizens rose 34 percent (to 2.2 million people) during this
same time frame. Many experts predict that this surge may con-
tinue if (as several have speculated) baby boomers become more
divorce-prone as they age.
How do marriage and divorce rates in the United States com-
pare with those in the rest of the world? It is interesting to note
that Americans marry and divorce more often than almost anyone else
in the world. Other nations—notably Russia and Sweden with
their inordinately high overall divorce rates of about 65 percent—
have even higher divorce statistics than America does. But, we
are just about tops when it comes to the serial cycle of multiple
re-marriages and re-divorces. Americans marry literally twice as
often as the French, 40 percent more than Germans, 30 percent
more than Japanese, 25 percent more than Canadians, and 20 per-
cent more than Mexicans. Ninety percent of Americans will say
“I do” at some point in their lives.
Not surprisingly, Americans then turn around and divorce
more frequently than almost anybody else. In the United States,
the divorce rate per thousand residents runs at about 4.8. In Can-
ada, it is 2.9, in France it is 1.9, in Germany it is 1.7, in Japan it is
1.4, while in Mexico it is 0.6.
Social anthropologist David Murray says Americans think of
marriage as “an individual choice based on love,” in contrast to
more traditional societies that view it as a family decision based
on economic and social considerations. Compare the United States
with India, for example, where there is a long cultural history
of matchmaking and where as many as 90 percent of weddings
are still “arranged.” Although we all know that half of American
marriages end in divorce, we still don’t give up. Instead, that can-
do American spirit takes over and we give it another go. Nearly
half of all U.S. weddings in the 1990s were remarriages for one
or both partners, according to a report by the Population Refer-
ence Bureau.
The most recent numbers, though, appear to indicate that
Americans seem to have tempered their marrying impulses a bit
in the last few years. According to the publication Euromonitor, the
U.S. marriage rate—the number of marriages for every thousand