Would you marry me… again?

Pavel Prikhodko, Ph.D. Machine Learning

An ancient proverb says that you cannot step in the same river twice, but some people are trying to disprove it. Pew Research Center conducted a survey about remarriages in 2014: the result shows that four in 10 new American marriages include at least one previously-married partner.

According to information published at Statista.com in 2013, the total share of American adults aged from 55 to 64 who remarried after having been married before was 67 percent. The number of remarried people aged 65 and older was 50 percent. In 2013, 63 percent of Americans aged between 45 and 54 were married for the second time in their lives. The percentage of people aged from 35 to 44 who were remarried was 57. The share of remarried adults aged between 25 and 34 was 43 percent. A lower share (29 percent) was shown in young adults aged from 18 to 24.

If we have a look at the moral stance regarding getting a divorce, we notice that most American respondents (71 percent) think that a divorce is morally acceptable. About 20 percent of them said that divorce as morally wrong. Some people (7 percent) said that divorce could be morally acceptable or wrong depending on the situation. A very low number (1 percent) of respondents had no opinion about remarriages at all.

1Now let’s examine the percentage of Americans from different generations that were married between age 18 and 32. The largest share of any group to be married in this age range was the Silent Generation in the 1960s: 65 percent. About 48 percent of the Boomer Generation was married between age 18 and 32 (1980). The share of married Millennials (2013) of the same ages was 26 percent. The percentage of Generation X that was married between age 18 and 32 was 36 percent (1997).

2In total, there were 63 million married American women and 62 million married American men in 2013. At the same time, 41 million men were never married, versus 36 million women. The number of divorced people was 14 million for women and 10 million for men.

Unfortunately, a person’s marital status can change not only from divorce, but also a much sadder reason. In 2013, about three million widowers and 11.2 million widows were living in America.

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About Pavel Prikhodko

Pavel Prikhodko, Ph.D. Machine Learning

Pavel has worked for many years as a researcher and developer on a wide range of applications (varying from mechanics and manufacturing to social data, finance and advertising), building predictive systems and trying to find stories that data can tell.

In his free time, he enjoys being with his family.

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