If you knew graduating from college, waiting a few years to marry, settling down and having a child would make your marriage last, would you do it? Your answer might be up in the air — but the statistics are solid as a rock. They show that your risk for divorce is significantly less if you do those things. While they can’t show whether you’ll be happy or not, experts say they do show your marriage is more likely to last until death do you part. “People who marry older with more education have the lowest divorce rates,” said Betsy Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.
Stevenson, who studies marriage and divorce statistics, recently used the statistics to develop the Marriage Calculator, which allows users to examine their risk of divorce compared to others who married about the same age, have the same education level and have been married for about as long.
It also uses historical census data to predict a user’s risk of divorce in the next five years. Keeping in mind that anything more than 7 percent is a high risk, the Marriage Calculator, predicts that “The Hills” stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have a combined average of 12 percent of divorcing within the next five years.
“No one has done this before,” Stevenson said. “People can use this tool to think about hypotheticals.”
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