Divorce Rate Statistics

A few weeks ago, I was listening to Kerrang! on the radio as I drove back from a particularly spectacular week spent with my lover, Ruf. The two male presenters had some statistics that showed that more divorces were initiated by the wife and they seemed to be saying that men were just too lazy or set in their ways to do anything about the declining quality of a relationship, whereas their wives would realise that enough was enough and terminate it.

So, I thought I’d try to find the research that gave them those figures.

The Office of National Statistics published the figures for divorce in the UK on 28th January 2010 where divorce covered both annulments and dissolutions.

For 67 per cent of divorces in 2008, the wife was granted the divorce. For all divorces granted to an individual (rather than jointly to both), behaviour was the most common reason for divorce.

The divorce rate in England and Wales in 2008 fell by 5.1 per cent over the previous year reaching its lowest level since 1979 at 11.2 divorcing people per 1,000 married population.

The statistics are split into five-year age groups and, for the fourth year in a row, men and women aged 25-29 had the highest divorce rate of all groups with 22.8 divorces per 1,000 men and 26.0 per 1,000 women. This compared with 16.5 divorces per 1,000 married men aged 45 to 49 and 14.5 divorces per 1,000 married women aged 45 to 49 in 2008.

Since 1998 the average age at divorce in England and Wales has risen from 40.4 to 43.9 years for men and from 37.9 to 41.4 years for women, partly reflecting the rise in age at marriage.

One in five men and women divorcing in 2008 had a previous marriage ending in divorce, with 69% of divorces in 2008 being granted to couples where the marriage was the first for both parties.