No Marriage—No Divorce: Couples who once might have wed and then divorced now are not marrying at all, reports The State of our Unions 2005, an annual report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. The U.S. divorce rate is 17.7 per 1,000 married women, down from 22.6 in ‘80. Also the marriage rate has declined 50% since ‘70 from 76.5 per 1,000 unmarried women to 39.9. Cohabiting couples have twice the breakup rate of married couples and in the US, 40% bring kids into these often-shaky live-in relationships. In America, 8.1% of coupled households are made up of unmarried, heterosexual partners. Although many European countries have higher cohabitation rates, divorce rates in those
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