Research: Religious Americans Less Likely to Divorce

Recent data suggests that faithful young adults can marry in their 20s without increasing the risk of separation.

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According to the US Census, the average American couple gets married around the age of 30. Many young adults believe that forming unions closer to that age reduces their risk of divorce, and, indeed, there is research consistent with that belief. But we also have evidence suggesting that religious Americans are less likely to divorce, even as they are more likely to marry younger than 30.

This paradoxical pattern raises two questions worth exploring: Is the way religious Americans form their marriages different than the way their more secular peers do? And do religious unions formed by 20-somethings face different divorce odds than those formed by secular Americans in the same age group?

The answer to that last question is complicated by the role of cohabitation in contemporary family formation. Today, more than 70 percent of marriages are preceded by cohabitation, as Figure 1 indicates. Increased cohabitation is both a cause and a consequence of the rise in the average age of first marriage. But what most young adults do not know is that cohabiting before marriage, especially with someone other than your future spouse, is also associated with an increased risk of divorce, as a recent Stanford study reports.

One reason that religious marriages in America may be more stable is that they reduce young adults’ odds of cohabiting prior to marriage, even though they increase their likelihood of marrying at a relatively young age. With that in mind, we’ve explored the relationships between religion, cohabitation, age at marriage, and divorce by looking at data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG).

Does religion influence marriage and cohabitation?

To address this question and others, we merged data from the National ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine
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