Comments on: Mormon Divorce

By: Clark

Clark — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:25:36 +0000

It depends upon how you count “Mormon.” But from what I can tell there just aren’t any contemporary statistics. All the statistics that could give quasi-accurate conclusions are pretty dated.

Even the national divorce rate is somewhat misleading since you have people who marry and divorce multiple times. There are lots of ways to calculate divorce rates and each has a slightly different meaning. This NYTs article is worth reading.

The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is
to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced.
Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers
say. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970′s led some to project that
the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch
downward.

Given that the Mormon divorce rate is lower, especially for active LDS, at earlier times I’d expect that trend to continue today. Although it is possible that LDS as a community were following national trends but just delayed in time and smaller in magnitude.

It’s sure be interesting to know.

By: (Khadijah) Gwen Boucher

(Khadijah) Gwen Boucher — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 18:32:16 +0000

It is interesting that the national divorce rate is around 60% for all Americans. So far, I have not seen anything to say that Mormon divorce rate is either higher or lower than that.

I did have a non Mormon pastor tell me the other day that the Mormon divorce rate was high, but he could not provide any data. It is shameful how we enjoy such outrageous lies about each other.

By: Clark

Clark — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:42:58 +0000

30% seems much too high based upon the other statistics I’ve seen. How did they arrive at that?

By: SilverRain

SilverRain — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:31:17 +0000

“Active” LDS marriages would be an interesting figure: that is, marriages where both spouses are active, participating LDS. I suspect that more than a few LDS divorces happen after one or the other has stopped believing or living the gospel, even if they were initially sealed in the temple.

By: Glenn Thigpen

Glenn Thigpen — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:36:26 +0000

It would be interesting to see what percentage of active LDS marriages end in divorce.

Glenn

By: Matt W.

Matt W. — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:36:51 +0000

In “A Statistical Profile of Mormons”, the Authors estimate that the divorce rate of when both in the couple attend church regularly is ~30%, and say this is as close as the can get with the data the have (from 2000)

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:15:05 +0000

I think that six percent figure has stuck with us because it came from a big study looking specifically at Mormons. Most of what I have seen since has been looking at the small Mormon slice of general population studies, which can’t produce a temple marriage stat. I wonder what surveys Judd takes his 20% number from. I would suppose that internally the Church membership department keeps the General Authorities supplied with timely and fairly accurate counts of civil divorces of temple-sealed marriages.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:24:21 +0000

Thanks John. Not sure how I missed that. This FAIR article goes through Judd's methodology although it didn't have the later figure you mentioned. Interesting that the 6% figure is still being quoted by so many articles though. It'd be nice to have a more formal statement on it.