“Marriage,” a character in a movie once said. “Marriage is what brings us together today.”
But, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that is true for an increasingly smaller percentage of Oregon’s population.
But, it turns out, maybe that’s a good thing because at the same time, fewer people in Oregon are getting divorced.
In 1990, Oregon’s rate of marriage was 8.9 for every 1,000 people. That year, Oregon’s divorce rate was 5.5 for every 1,000 people.
Rates are based on provisional counts of divorces by state of occurrence. Rates are “per 1,000 total population residing in area.” I take this to mean the number of divorces/marriages occurring in that year, not the number of people getting one.
The CDC’s numbers show both of those numbers generally went down from there.
In 1995, Oregon’s marriage rate was 8.1 for every 1,000 people. In 2000, it was 7.6 and it was 7.3 in 2005. In 2010, it was 6.5. There was a small bump in 2015, when the rate climbed to 6.9 and then, in the last year with data available, 2020, it dropped further, to 5.2.
Divorce rates followed a similar trajectory. In 1995, the divorce rate was 4.7 for every 1,000. In 2000, the number climbed slightly to 4.8, but in 2005, it dropped again to 4.2. In 2010, the rate was 4 and in 2015, it was 3.4. By 2020, Oregon’s divorce rate was down to 2.6 for every 1,000 people.
Marriage rates are declining all over America. Even in Nevada, a state where people go to get married, the marriage rate has dropped dramatically. In that state, the rate in 1995 was 99 for every 1,000 people. In 2020, it was only 21.
While there is certainly plenty of hand-wringing going on about the downward trend of marriage, maybe we should focus on the downward trend of divorce instead. Maybe it’s possible that more people are making a thoughtful choice to get married, instead of being pressured into the commitment. Either way, a lot of people are doing less paperwork, which is always a good thing.
— Lizzy Acker
503-221-8052 lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker
