Are you more likely to get divorced if you are employed or unemployed? And how does your level of education and ethnic background affect the likelihood that your relationship will fail?
Nathan Yau, a statistician from California, has turned data on divorce rates in the US into an interactive graph which allows users to explore how the statistical probability of divorce differs with factors such as age, sex, education and employment.
“What surprised me was the differences between men and women. I expected the percentages to end up at similar values for most of the groups, but there’s some flip-flopping between men and women as you change between different demographics,” wrote Mr Yau on the Flowing Data site.
Among employed people, women are five percentage points more likely than men to have been divorced at least once in their lifetime. However, among unemployed people, an almost equal proportion of men and women had ended their marriages.
“My only guess is less divorce opportunity for men. We know they tend to marry later than women and die earlier. Maybe the window is smaller?” he wrote.
No group has more than a 45 per cent chance of divorce overall, which although the chart is based on American data, chimes with the UK divorce rate of around 42 per cent, according the the Office for National Statistics.
The number of divorces in the UK decreased by 2.9 per cent from 2012 to 2013, and was highest among men and women aged 40 to 44.
John Gottman, a psychologist and relationship researcher, claims to have discovered the reason for which most relationships break down – contempt.
“[Contempt] is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust. It’s virtually impossible to resolve a problem when your partner is getting the message you’re disgusted with him or her,“ he said.
