What's the straight dope on the divorce rate?

[Wolfian]

Most of us Americans have heard at one point or another that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Is that true? How is that calculated?

[astro]

Here

US Divorce Rates

It’s not a made up factoid. Overall it is around 50%.

Here is an excerpt from the Census Bureau report, with a link to the full report:

"The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report which found that 43 percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years. The study is based on the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative sample of women age 15 to 44 in 1995. Bramlett, Matthew and William Mosher. “First marriage dissolution, divorce, and remariage: United States,” Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics; No .323. Hyattsville MD: National Center for Health Statistics: 2 1.

"Data in the Census report were collected from both men and women, age 15 and over, and a different methodology was used than in the NCHS report."About 50% of first marriages for men under age 45 may end in divorce, and between 44 and 52% of women’s first marriages may end in divorce for these age groups. The likelihood of a divorce is lowest for men and women age 60, for whom 36 % of men and 32 percent of women may divorce from their first marriage by the end of their lives. A similar statistical exercise was performed in 1975 using marital history data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Projections based on those data implied that about one-third of married persons who were 25 to 35 years old in 1975 would end their first marriage in divorce.

“This cohort of people, who in 1996 were about 45 to 55 years old, had already exceeded these projections as about 40% of men and women in these ages had divorced from their first marriage. Current projections now indicate that the proportion could be as high as 50% for persons now in their early forties.”

[UncleBill]

I am 37, and 50% of my marriages have ended in divorce.

[Loopus]

Cecil’s column on the subject: Is it true half of all marriages end in divorce?