The media would have us believe that ‘grey divorce’ is a major trend, led by women seeking a better life for their second 50 years.
In the Australian newspaper this week was an article stating that divorce rates among the over 50s have doubled since 1990 in the US and for those over 65 the rate has tripled.
“In 2010 one in four Americans who divorced is 50 or older. In 1990 it was fewer than one in 10”.
“Some experts suggest women have come to expect more from life than a merely ‘not awful’ marriage – and that they now have the wherewithal to act. Other causes cited include a generation that is inured to the stigma of divorce, and the tendency of retired men to hang around the house all day.”
A different picture in Australia
But the facts don’t support this trend in Australia. It is true that over the past 20 years the divorce rate for people aged 45 to 65 has increased by around 50 per cent but the numbers are so low that this cannot be seriously regarded as a social phenomena.
In fact, across Australia, divorce is in decline. In 1993 the crude divorce rate was 2.7 per 1000 marriages. In 2013 it was 2.1, or a 22 per cent drop, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
In 2013 there were 118,962 marriages and 47,638 divorces. For every 10 marriages there were four divorces.
Fifty per cent of those divorces occurred with people aged 25 to 44 and 50 per cent with people aged 45 to 64. (Around 0.7 per 1000 population divorced over age 65 – a negligible number).
This means that for all marriages of people aged 45 to 64 just 24,000 ended in divorce in 2013. This does not strike me as a major trend. In fact the reverse when you consider that today’s 50 to 60-year-old women, the ones suggested in the media wishing to escape ‘not awful’ marriages, have been in the workforce for 20+ years and fully confident of their own ability to live independently.
Interestingly the table above also indicates that it’s the men over age 65 who are seeking divorce in greater numbers.
What is true is that modern medicine will support us living a lot longer than our parents and increasingly we will be the carers for our partners for longer periods.
Old age is not a good time to be on your own.
* Crude divorce rate is calculated as the number of divorces granted during a calendar year per 1,000 estimated resident population at 30 June of the same year. (ABS)
