How intertwined are they? Well, researchers at Emory University took a look. According to The Atlantic, they…
…studied 3,000 married couples in the U.S. to determine the factors that predicted divorce. They analyzed income, religious attendance, how important attractiveness was to each partner, wedding attendance, and other metrics to determine the aspects associated with eventual marital dissolution.
When you add in those “other metrics”, the list looks like this…
- Time spent dating before engagement
- Household income
- Church attendance
- Attitude about wealth
- Attitude about physical appearance
- Number of people attending wedding
- Total wedding expenses
- Took honeymoon/size of honeymoon
So, of 8 categories, 5 are directly (or thereabouts) related to money. According to the study, couples that earn $125K+ are half as likely to divorce as those earning $25K.
When one partner cares deeply about the other’s wealth (usually the wife –the husband cares more about the wife’s looks) they are 20% more likely to divorce.
The cost of the wedding seems to be a big one. Using $5-10K as a reference point, they say that those significantly lower ($0-1K) are half as likely to split up, while those much higher ($20K and up) are twice as likely.
I don’t know what to think. I can point to real-life examples that do and don’t add up, and I am sure you can, too. As Homer Simpson once said “You can make statistics say anything you want them to. 34 per cent of people know that.”
What do YOU think? Let us know over at the MindField Online Facebook page, and have a great weekend!