I just read an Ezine article by Virginia Keeley who quotes some Texas divorce statistics. Here's a link to the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Youre-Not-Alone---A-Look-at-Recent-Divorce-Statistics&id=3138848
Let me know if this link doesn't work and I'll snip it out.
She says her numbers come from the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and other independent studies.
According to the article, the average divorce rate in the United States in 2007 was 3.6 per 1000 persons. And, by the way, I believe that the 1000 includes infants, children, bachelors, and widows. So, on average, there would be about 856,000 divorces each year in the United States. But, if Collin County's population is 500,000, you'd expect to see something like 1,800 divorces a year in Collin County, or about 7.2 divorces filed each day that the courts are open. That seems a bit low to me, but feels like it's in the ballpark.
At any rate, her statistics state that of those marriages that end in divorce, first marriages last "an average of 8 to 11 years" and remarriages that end in divorce last an average of 7.4 years for men and 7.1 years for women. This is vaguely in line with a study I did about Texas marriages that end in divorce, mingling first and subsequent marriages, that showed that Texas marriages ending in divorce lasted a little over 7 years (the 7-year itch?).
What I found most interesting was this:
• If you have an annual income of over $50,000, your risk of divorce decreases by 30%.
• If you wait to marry until you're over 25, your risk of divorce decreases by 24%.
• If your parents are happily married, your risk of divorce decreases by 14%.
• If you have strong religious beliefs, your risk of divorce decreases by 14%.
• If you've attended college, your risk of divorce decreases by 13%.
I've never really seen good statistics on the odds of a marriage ending in divorce, but I'm thinking it's in the ballpark of 50%. So, if you start with 50% and apply the adjustments above, you appear to be able to drastically decrease your odds of being divorced, The problem is that if you satisfy all of the adjustments above, the odds of getting divorced are -95% (a negative probability is impossible).
I'm reminded of the quote from Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."