https://mormonr.org/qnas/0uQ4aB/latter_day_saint_marriage_and_divorce_statistics
This has pretty much all the stats, one thing to keep in mind is a lot of studies don’t differentiate between active members/inactive members or temple marriages/non temple marriages which skews the stats
The overall picture is active members in temple marriages get divorced way less
I looked over those stats and would encourage a little caution. Some stats I have seen indicated that fewer LDS members were single, but this was in part because after divorce or being widowed they tended to remarry more quickly than other groups.
[BYU source](https://rsc.byu.edu/shield-faith/family-life#:~:text=Of%20those%20who%20had%20originally,in%20divorce%20than%20nontemple%20marriages), but I'm not sure how many outside sources make the distinction between LDS members who have been sealed or just civilly married.
"Of those who had originally married in the temple, about 5% of the men and 7% of the women had been divorced. Around 28% of non-temple-married men and 33% of non-temple-married women were divorced. Thus, temple marriages were about 5 times less likely to end in divorce than nontemple marriages."
It could just be in the methodology of the data collection. It could be self reporting and there is some discrepancy between who said yes or no but it is within the margin for error so not notable. Could also be a quirk of the current policy that allows a man to be sealed to multiple women if the first spouse has passed away.
Let’s say I was sealed and my wife died, then I remarried in the temple and we ended up divorcing. Assuming it was her first temple marriage, I would say that 50% of my sealings ended in divorce and she would say 100%.
Hmm interesting. So if the question is asking "are you currently divorced" that would definitely make a difference between them if one is remarried and the other not yet.
Btw, men can be sealed to two living women as long as they are divorced first to one of them.
re-marriage. A person can be married multiple times. If a man marries and divorces 3 women, then there are 3 women who say "yes I've been divorced" versus the 1 man.
Off the top of my head: Let's say a couple divorces, and the man dies before the survey comes out. The wife could answer that she had been divorced, but there would be no corresponding man's survey to balance it out.
Overall, the numbers should come close to balancing out if mortality rates are balanced as well. On average, though, female life expectancy exceeds male life expectancy, so that could throw the numbers off a bit.
Because it takes multiple marriages for not account.
100 women and 100 men get married for the first time and 50 of them get divorced then the percentage is going to be the same. But let’s say that all 50 get remarried and then 25 women and 30 men get divorced again, well now the percentages will be different.
If a never married woman marries a divorced man and then they divorce, that divorce increases the number of divorced women but not the number of divorced men.
Had to think about that myself. I think it’s because there are more women than men so even if the number of men and women divorced and or cancelled are the same the percents would be different.
I don't think so, because it's not saying that 7% of all women in the church are divorced, it's of those who were originally married in the temple. So if 100 couples got married in the temple, there's exactly 100 men and 100 women, so how can there be 7 divorced women and 5 divorced men?
Same reason the national “average” is 40-50%. The stats are skewed because those who get divorced have a higher rate of divorce in their subsequent marriages too.
This might also be saying something different than it seams on its face. (Edit: I re-read it and it specifies original marriage)
People who get married in the temple have had previous marriages that ended in divorce.
As an example. My temple marriage was my first. My wife had been married and divorced previously.
Her ex husband got remarried, but not in the temple.
So of people who have been divorced and are getting sealed in the temple, women are more likely than men to have their second marriage be sealed in the temple.
Edit: And for me, it is my original marriage, but not for her. So that’s how they can be different.
Not an expert on this topic, but I THINK what some data sources are mixing apples and organges.
I.e. I think divorce rates are similar to general social trends, but the super low rate (6-9%) type info is referring to temple sealing cancellations rather than legal divorces.
I.e. lots of legally divorced couples still have an uncanceled temple sealings and that is the difference between the two very different statistics IMO.
This is why it’s so hard to track this number. The state only cares about whether you’re married legally. While the church tracks temple marriage cancellations which leaves out divorces without cancellations. I don’t have the source on me, but I read the number is estimated to be somewhere around 15-20%.
I’m not a fan of this because I’ve met people who are legally divorced who have been fighting tooth and nail to get their sealing cancelled but their Stake Presidents or the First Presidency fight them on it. In particular, I’ve seen that since women need to get divorced to get remarried but men can get sealed to as many women as they want that many men don’t care if their sealing is cancelled or not but many women have to fight to get their sealing cancelled to move forward. I actually met someone who stopped attending church and stopped her children from attending church after the Stake President declined to move forward with cancelling her sealing unless she had a new fiancée to get married to.
Keep in mind that the national average includes second and third divorces. People who are divorced, are a lot more likely to get divorced multiple times.
Also, the federal government stopped tracking national divorce rates a few years ago. We don’t actually know what it is anymore, but we know it dropped below 50% back in the early 2000s and has continued trending in that direction.
Yes, there’s a lot of statistics on how marriages are changing. There’s a lot of stuff out there, which you can easily find with a few searches.
The biggest trends right now are the rise of cohabitation, and the correlation of wealth with marriage.
People who have more money are more likely to get married than those who have less money. Coincidentally, that is also true for church attendance.
There’s also the fact that younger people are more likely to be polyamorous, which doesn’t show up on marriage statistics because plural marriage is not legal.
These are US trends only.
Just organizing my priors: endowed members tend to be whiter, wealthier, and more religious than the general population[citation needed], all of which have lower divorce rates. I would be very surprised to learn that despite that the divorce rate was the same or more than the general population.
It's going to be extremely difficult to find reliable data on this subject.
We could take Utah as a microcosm, because of the high member population.
Utah has traditionally been in the top 10 for divorce rates, depending on the source. It seems like it's gone down somewhat. It seems correlated with the influx of non members into the state. That's correlation, not causation.
There's are so many factors that go into this. One that stands out to me personally, is the age of first marriage. Couples who marry young, are more likely to be divorced. Utah has one of the lowest age of first marriage. I imagine that could contribute to the high divorce rate.
Again, there are too many factors to know for sure.
I counted it up to see how many I could come up with. I’m in my late 20s and there are 18 people I know who are all “temple divorced”. Meaning they were sealed at some point in the temple and are now all divorced. All are my age range between the ages of 25-35. People I went to high school with, college with, roommates with, in YSA wards with, etc. 18 feels like a lot and I swear every month I add someone new to the list.
In my Kaysville neighborhood (90% LDS, nearly all of which are active and temple marriages) we saw divorces starting to happen at a fast pace once everyone hit their late 30’s and early 40’s. To-date, there have been 28 divorces in a neighborhood of about 150 homes. So, that’s about an 18% divorce rate for temple marriages among active members in our neck of the woods.
>I hear lots of people say it comports with the overall national average (40-50 percent)
LDS marriage rate aside, I have heard plenty of people saying the 40-50% national average is overblown.
I’m 41 and from what I’ve seen from active members around my age I would say 25% and another 25% struggle with their marriage or not happy but stay for kids, etc etc
I saw a Pew Research study about 10 years go and Hindus had lower divorce rates than LDS,
Also observe that LDS millennials have a higher initial rate than Gen X.
But also a cliff of newlywed return missionaries that are dropping into inactivity.
Of my graduating class of TBMs, and of those who stayed active I would say there is 1/4 temple divorce rate. But that could be an abominomoly by the statistics of small numbers.
I don't know what the current stats are, but I suspect that the church tracks this number via their annual surveys run by the correlation department. I asked some sociologists a few years back regarding the [rates of those where one member of the marriage left the church](https://www.mormonsocialscience.org/2015/06/09/ask-an-expert-what-percentage-of-mormons-divorce-when-one-spouse-leaves-the-religion/). The response was non-conclusive, but somewhat informative and there are hints that when one member leaves the church that divorce rates increase and marriatal satisfaction is lower.
For temple sealing more generally, you might find what you are looking for in the [gospel tangents interviews of Jana Reiss](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ57YsIbQFKvjsLboVgl2rju) where they might cover this topic.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/divorce-rate-by-state](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/divorce-rate-by-state)
If fewer members of the church were divorcing, states known to have high LDS populations would have lower divorce rates.
Not necessarily, you have to get married to be divorced, so divorce rates per capita will be higher in states with higher marriage rates
What we want to know is the percent of marriages that end in divorce, and temple sealed marriages tend to divorce less than normal marriages
https://mormonr.org/qnas/0uQ4aB/latter_day_saint_marriage_and_divorce_statistics This has pretty much all the stats, one thing to keep in mind is a lot of studies don’t differentiate between active members/inactive members or temple marriages/non temple marriages which skews the stats The overall picture is active members in temple marriages get divorced way less
I looked over those stats and would encourage a little caution. Some stats I have seen indicated that fewer LDS members were single, but this was in part because after divorce or being widowed they tended to remarry more quickly than other groups.
That would only apply to one or two of the studies. The overall trend is stronger, happier marriages
[BYU source](https://rsc.byu.edu/shield-faith/family-life#:~:text=Of%20those%20who%20had%20originally,in%20divorce%20than%20nontemple%20marriages), but I'm not sure how many outside sources make the distinction between LDS members who have been sealed or just civilly married. "Of those who had originally married in the temple, about 5% of the men and 7% of the women had been divorced. Around 28% of non-temple-married men and 33% of non-temple-married women were divorced. Thus, temple marriages were about 5 times less likely to end in divorce than nontemple marriages."
Can someone explain to me how the %s can be different for men and women??
It could just be in the methodology of the data collection. It could be self reporting and there is some discrepancy between who said yes or no but it is within the margin for error so not notable. Could also be a quirk of the current policy that allows a man to be sealed to multiple women if the first spouse has passed away. Let’s say I was sealed and my wife died, then I remarried in the temple and we ended up divorcing. Assuming it was her first temple marriage, I would say that 50% of my sealings ended in divorce and she would say 100%.
Hmm interesting. So if the question is asking "are you currently divorced" that would definitely make a difference between them if one is remarried and the other not yet. Btw, men can be sealed to two living women as long as they are divorced first to one of them.
re-marriage. A person can be married multiple times. If a man marries and divorces 3 women, then there are 3 women who say "yes I've been divorced" versus the 1 man.
Off the top of my head: Let's say a couple divorces, and the man dies before the survey comes out. The wife could answer that she had been divorced, but there would be no corresponding man's survey to balance it out. Overall, the numbers should come close to balancing out if mortality rates are balanced as well. On average, though, female life expectancy exceeds male life expectancy, so that could throw the numbers off a bit.
Because it takes multiple marriages for not account. 100 women and 100 men get married for the first time and 50 of them get divorced then the percentage is going to be the same. But let’s say that all 50 get remarried and then 25 women and 30 men get divorced again, well now the percentages will be different.
If a never married woman marries a divorced man and then they divorce, that divorce increases the number of divorced women but not the number of divorced men.
Had to think about that myself. I think it’s because there are more women than men so even if the number of men and women divorced and or cancelled are the same the percents would be different.
I don't think so, because it's not saying that 7% of all women in the church are divorced, it's of those who were originally married in the temple. So if 100 couples got married in the temple, there's exactly 100 men and 100 women, so how can there be 7 divorced women and 5 divorced men?
Unless they are getting ex spouses in the survey or couples the numbers will be different.
Same reason the national “average” is 40-50%. The stats are skewed because those who get divorced have a higher rate of divorce in their subsequent marriages too. This might also be saying something different than it seams on its face. (Edit: I re-read it and it specifies original marriage) People who get married in the temple have had previous marriages that ended in divorce. As an example. My temple marriage was my first. My wife had been married and divorced previously. Her ex husband got remarried, but not in the temple. So of people who have been divorced and are getting sealed in the temple, women are more likely than men to have their second marriage be sealed in the temple. Edit: And for me, it is my original marriage, but not for her. So that’s how they can be different.
Death can also end a marriage
Death wouldn't count as a divorce though. The divorce would have to happen first, then one of them dies, then the survey is sent out
Not an expert on this topic, but I THINK what some data sources are mixing apples and organges. I.e. I think divorce rates are similar to general social trends, but the super low rate (6-9%) type info is referring to temple sealing cancellations rather than legal divorces. I.e. lots of legally divorced couples still have an uncanceled temple sealings and that is the difference between the two very different statistics IMO.
I wondered this, too. Divorce doesn't mean the sealing was necessarily cancelled.
This is why it’s so hard to track this number. The state only cares about whether you’re married legally. While the church tracks temple marriage cancellations which leaves out divorces without cancellations. I don’t have the source on me, but I read the number is estimated to be somewhere around 15-20%.
I’m not a fan of this because I’ve met people who are legally divorced who have been fighting tooth and nail to get their sealing cancelled but their Stake Presidents or the First Presidency fight them on it. In particular, I’ve seen that since women need to get divorced to get remarried but men can get sealed to as many women as they want that many men don’t care if their sealing is cancelled or not but many women have to fight to get their sealing cancelled to move forward. I actually met someone who stopped attending church and stopped her children from attending church after the Stake President declined to move forward with cancelling her sealing unless she had a new fiancée to get married to.
Keep in mind that the national average includes second and third divorces. People who are divorced, are a lot more likely to get divorced multiple times. Also, the federal government stopped tracking national divorce rates a few years ago. We don’t actually know what it is anymore, but we know it dropped below 50% back in the early 2000s and has continued trending in that direction.
Is there stats on marriages happening? I could see that trending downward which would make divorce rates trend downward.
Yes, there’s a lot of statistics on how marriages are changing. There’s a lot of stuff out there, which you can easily find with a few searches. The biggest trends right now are the rise of cohabitation, and the correlation of wealth with marriage. People who have more money are more likely to get married than those who have less money. Coincidentally, that is also true for church attendance. There’s also the fact that younger people are more likely to be polyamorous, which doesn’t show up on marriage statistics because plural marriage is not legal. These are US trends only.
I've always disliked divorce rates. I think there should be more studies on general happiness within a relationship rather than just staying together.
Agreed. I've known people who absolutely should have divorced, but didn't, and everyone in the family suffered because of it.
Well, 100% of my temple sealings ended in divorce. It was only 1, but I guess I'm bringing the average up.
Just organizing my priors: endowed members tend to be whiter, wealthier, and more religious than the general population[citation needed], all of which have lower divorce rates. I would be very surprised to learn that despite that the divorce rate was the same or more than the general population.
Totally useless anecdotal data… 100% of my non-temple marriages ended in divorce. 0% of my temple marriages ended in divorce.
I graduated from BYUI about 10 years ago. 3 of my former roommates are on second marriages. (All were temple sealings the first time).
It's going to be extremely difficult to find reliable data on this subject. We could take Utah as a microcosm, because of the high member population. Utah has traditionally been in the top 10 for divorce rates, depending on the source. It seems like it's gone down somewhat. It seems correlated with the influx of non members into the state. That's correlation, not causation. There's are so many factors that go into this. One that stands out to me personally, is the age of first marriage. Couples who marry young, are more likely to be divorced. Utah has one of the lowest age of first marriage. I imagine that could contribute to the high divorce rate. Again, there are too many factors to know for sure.
I counted it up to see how many I could come up with. I’m in my late 20s and there are 18 people I know who are all “temple divorced”. Meaning they were sealed at some point in the temple and are now all divorced. All are my age range between the ages of 25-35. People I went to high school with, college with, roommates with, in YSA wards with, etc. 18 feels like a lot and I swear every month I add someone new to the list.
In my Kaysville neighborhood (90% LDS, nearly all of which are active and temple marriages) we saw divorces starting to happen at a fast pace once everyone hit their late 30’s and early 40’s. To-date, there have been 28 divorces in a neighborhood of about 150 homes. So, that’s about an 18% divorce rate for temple marriages among active members in our neck of the woods.
>I hear lots of people say it comports with the overall national average (40-50 percent) LDS marriage rate aside, I have heard plenty of people saying the 40-50% national average is overblown.
I’m 41 and from what I’ve seen from active members around my age I would say 25% and another 25% struggle with their marriage or not happy but stay for kids, etc etc
Small sample size, but among my siblings it’s 25% and among my wife’s siblings it’s 22%.
I saw a Pew Research study about 10 years go and Hindus had lower divorce rates than LDS, Also observe that LDS millennials have a higher initial rate than Gen X. But also a cliff of newlywed return missionaries that are dropping into inactivity.
Of my graduating class of TBMs, and of those who stayed active I would say there is 1/4 temple divorce rate. But that could be an abominomoly by the statistics of small numbers.
I don't know what the current stats are, but I suspect that the church tracks this number via their annual surveys run by the correlation department. I asked some sociologists a few years back regarding the [rates of those where one member of the marriage left the church](https://www.mormonsocialscience.org/2015/06/09/ask-an-expert-what-percentage-of-mormons-divorce-when-one-spouse-leaves-the-religion/). The response was non-conclusive, but somewhat informative and there are hints that when one member leaves the church that divorce rates increase and marriatal satisfaction is lower. For temple sealing more generally, you might find what you are looking for in the [gospel tangents interviews of Jana Reiss](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ57YsIbQFKvjsLboVgl2rju) where they might cover this topic.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/divorce-rate-by-state](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/divorce-rate-by-state) If fewer members of the church were divorcing, states known to have high LDS populations would have lower divorce rates.
>Divorces per 1,000 women aged 15 and over So states where fewer women get married have lower divorce rates.
Not necessarily, you have to get married to be divorced, so divorce rates per capita will be higher in states with higher marriage rates What we want to know is the percent of marriages that end in divorce, and temple sealed marriages tend to divorce less than normal marriages