We all know how much you guys love maths…
A new study suggests that in order to secure a happy marriage and avoid divorce in the first five years, people should get married between the ages of 28 and 32.
For those of you reading who are older than 32, remember that this is just based on statistics and can in no way account for your personal situation. You are a credit to yourself and your ex wasn’t worth it.
Let’s continue.
The study was done by Nick Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah, and published by the generally pro-marriage Institute of Family Studies. His study suggests that people who get married between the ages of 28 and 32 generally stick together longer than those who wed earlier or later.
Wolfinger analysed data from the National Survey of Family Growth and found a sort of upside down bell curve. “The odds of divorce decline as you age from your teenage years through your late 20s and early 30s,” he writes.
“Thereafter, the chances of divorce go up again as you move into your late 30s and early 40s.” For each year after about 32, the chance of divorce goes up about 5% says the study.
Wolfinger’s theory has been dubbed ‘The Goldilocks Theory’, as it needs its participants to be not too young and not too cold.
However, not everyone agrees.
The University of Maryland’s sociologist Phillip Cohen used a different set of data from the American Community Survey to determine the perfect marital age, to say that getting older didn’t mean your marriage had less chance of survival.
And according to Cohen’s analysis, the perfect age to get married if you don’t want to get divorced is 45 to 49.
So, basically, there is hope for us all – and in summary, you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.
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