>> Southern states account for eight of the 10 highest divorce rates,
>> while nine of the 10 lowest are in the north-east, according to the US
>> Census Bureau.
>>
>> Massachusetts, home of John Kerry, the unsuccessful presidential
>> candidate, has the lowest rate at 2.4 divorces per 1,000 people,
>> against 4.1 in President George W. Bush's Texas.
>
>
> <snip>
>
>> The trend towards getting married later has helped reduce the
>> nationwide divorce rate from 4.7 per 1,000 people in 1990 to 4 in
>> 2001. However, the figure still dwarfs the European Union's rate of
>> 1.9.
>
>
> Nuts. It just occurred to me that this is probably almost entirely
> accounted for by a statistical artifact: if you don't get married, you don't
> divorce. So what happens in Blue States is that by the time you marry,
> you've had two long term cohabitations that led to break ups, whereas in Red
> States, those have been two marriages....
<snip>
> What "the trend towards getting married later" really means is "the trend
> toward shacking up for years first." That's how it brings the divorce rate
> down. We aren't counting the practice swings towards the average.
>
It's not practice swings: it's working the count. I'd say that blue staters have taken the lessons of Moneyball (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=8-0393324818-0) to heart.
--tim francis-wright