More Americans Rejecting Marriage in 50s and Beyond

A New York Times story on this study about more middle-aged people divorcing or remaining single. It’s very interesting work, but the figures look so big, to a large degree because the baby boom generation is so much bigger than previous generations.

            Over the past 20 years, the divorce rate among baby boomers has surged by more than 50 percent, even as divorce rates over all have stabilized nationally. At the same time, more adults are remaining single. The shift is changing the traditional portrait of older Americans: About a third of adults ages 46 through 64 were divorced, separated or had never been married in 2010, compared with 13 percent in 1970, according to an analysis of recently released census data conducted by demographers at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio.