Breaking down divorce rates, state by state.
Going to the chapel and…gonna get divorced?
Contrary to what your jaded friend told you at your last high school reunion, divorce isn’t incredibly common. Divorce rates are, on average, dropping around the country. With that said, though, there are still some states where the rate of marital schism is more than double that of others. Below, we break down the states with the highest (and the lowest) rates for marital dissolution per year, along with some evidence-backed suggestions for what’s behind these different rates.
Which states have the highest divorce rates?
Before we get into the latest divorce data from the 2021 U.S. Census, there’s some important context to understand. First, the numbers below will likely look lower than what you may have expected if you’re used to the “half of all marriages end in divorce” line. That’s because these numbers come from a different data pool, and a different period, than that 50 percent estimation. To be specific, these rates reflect the number of divorces that take place in each state, in a single year, per 1,000 women aged 15 years or older. For example, Arkansas has a divorce “rate” of 11, which means that for every 1,000 women aged 15 years or older (not just married women), 11 of those individuals get divorced on average in a given year. As for why the census reports data for women, not men, they say that’s because women tend to more accurately self-report these numbers.
The 50 percent average, on the other hand, is often used to reflect the number of divorces that will take place among the pool of married couples over a person’s entire lifetime. It’s also not specific to the U.S.
With that context in mind, here’s a list of the U.S. states with the highest divorce rates per 1,000 women 15 years and older, according to the U.S. Census from 2021.
States with the highest divorce rates in 2021
- Idaho: 11.1
- Arkansas: 11
- Mississippi: 9.7
- Oklahoma: 9.3
- Wyoming: 8.9
- Tennessee: 8.5
- Kentucky: 8.3
- Montana: 8.3
- Indiana: 8.2
- Washington: 8.2
So why are these states in particular home to so much holy un-matrimony? There are countless factors at play, no doubt — but one major factor to consider is college graduation rates.
There is a slight correlation between college graduation rates and divorce rates. (Researchers tend to believe this connection has to do with the higher levels of financial stability that college graduates can expect, compared to those who don’t have a college degree.) So it makes sense that some of the states with the lowest population of college graduates would have a higher population of divorced people. According to Wallethub research that measured how much schooling U.S. states have and compared college graduation rates, the 10 states in the country with the least amount of schooling have decent overlap with the 10 states listed above, with five states in common (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee.)
Something else worth noting is that the difference between the states with the highest divorce rates and the states with the lowest divorce rates comes down to a few individuals per 1,000. Here are the states where marriage dissolutions happen the least. Again, these rates reflect the number of women per 1,000 women aged 15 years and older who got divorced in 2021, per U.S. Census data.
States with the lowest divorce rates in 2021
- New Hampshire: 4.3
- Massachusetts: 4.6
- Connecticut: 4.8
- New Jersey: 4.8
- Rhode Island: 4.9
- New York: 5.6
- Pennsylvania: 5.9
- California: 5.9
- New Jersey: 6.3
- Massachusetts: 6.4
- Wisconsin: 6.4
- California: 6.5
As you can see, the numbers here aren’t that much lower than the numbers in states with the highest divorce rates — which means that divorce isn’t a huge regional trend in one direction or another. Yes, there’s a high percentage of New England states reflected in the list above, but these numbers are all extremely close to one another when you zoom out a bit to gain perspective.
New Hampshire, for example, is the state with the lowest divorce rate at 4.3 new divorces per 1,000 women 15 and older, while Idaho is the state with the highest divorce rate at 11.1 new divorces per 1,000 married individuals. That’s a difference of seven or so divorces per 1,000 individuals — not exactly a major gap. And both numbers are still way lower than what we were seeing several years ago.
Why is the divorce rate dropping in the United States?
Across the country, divorce rates have been consistently dropping for decades now. Marital dissolution peaked in the 1970s and 80s; in 1986, for example, the U.S. divorce rate was 21.2 per 1,000 women aged 15 and older. According to the census data cited above, that was down to 6.9 in 2021. So why is the rate dropping?
It would be reasonable to look at this data and conclude that people must be seeking out more sustainable partners in marriage. There’s a societal argument for that, given that people tend to marry later, and there’s more equity between the sexes, both in the workplace and in the domestic universe, than there was 50 years ago.
But there’s also another crucial factor behind these dropping divorce rates: the dropping marital rate. It’s not exactly the rosiest explanation, but it’s a fact: People are getting married way less than they used to, and people generally feel less pressure to commit to marriage with a long-term partner than they used to.
It’s much more common in 2023 to live with a partner without ever getting married or to live with friends well into your 30s and 40s. The financial security that used to come along with a proposal isn’t as cut-and-dry as it used to be, back when women were largely kept out of the workforce and heterosexual relationships were the only accepted form of romantic love.
It’s a brave new world, for better and for worse — so it makes sense that our entire notion of marriage and divorce has changed along with everything else.
