Just a quick note for people wondering about this new thing by Nicholas Wolfinger on Brad Wilcox’s blog. He says it used to be (before 1995) that getting married young increased the odds of divorce. Since then, however, he says getting married either before or after age 32 raises the odds of divorce.
Why is that? His explanation — in his very own words, from his very own post: “my money is on a selection effect.” In other words, do not follow the advice in the headline, which is: “Want to Avoid Divorce? Wait to Get Married, But Not Too Long.” Because if the mechanism is selection, then changing your behavior to ride that curve will not work.
I’m not getting into the methods, which are not revealed, despite a link for “more information” — there is no paper, no tables, no code or data. However, something is off, and the post is off-gassing a discernible essence of Wilcox’s influence. In the new blog post, they show this graph:
Wow, that’s a pretty big boomerang effect. If it weren’t a selection effect, it might really be relevant for personal decision-making. But when you follow the link for “more information” you see this graph:
The upward swing here is hardly enough to get your marriage promotion lather up. Clearly, something had to be improved from Wolfinger’s post from April and his post for Wilcox’s site in July. That’s the kind of data leadership we expect from this site. (Also, get rid of those dots, which show you the all those people with really low divorce odds at higher ages.)
Related:
- On the Institute for Family Studies
- On the epidemic of turning stories about research findings into personal advice
- On marriage promotion
Family Inequality 
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