How High is the Divorce Rate in Canada?
November 29th, 2007
The divorce rate in Canada is 44%, which means that more than one in every three marriages will fail and end in divorce. The rate is higher for those who marry more than once. The divorce rate can also be expressed as the number of divorces which take place each year out of every thousand people. By this measure the rate in Canada is 2.46 per thousand which is 8th highest in the world yet far behind the US which is first at 4.95 per thousand.
Today, the divorce rate appears to be falling and is predicted to keep falling for the next few years. Reasons for this are an aging population, and more people waiting until they are older before getting married. Younger couples and those who have been married once already choose to live together and enter a common law situation before, if ever, committing to marriage.
The divorce rate is highest for couples in their first four years of marriage. These numbers diminish each year after that, so that by age 50 and over, divorce is relatively rare. People in their late 20s are the most susceptible to divorce at a rate of 2.2 per every 1000. This decreases for people in their mid-40s to 1.1, and to 0.65 for those over the age of 75.
The high divorce rate is a sign that the marriage commitment is not taken as seriously as our ancestors took it, and divorce laws have made it relatively easy for couples to end a marriage. To compare different countries’ divorce rates visit www.nationmaster.com.
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