>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.
Not exactly. Here are the stats for five interesting states:
MARRIAGES & DIVORCES PER 1,000 PEOPLE, 2001
marriages divorces div/mar
Massachusetts 6.4 2.4 37.5% New York 7.9 3.0 38.0%
Alabama 9.6 5.3 55.2% Mississippi 6.7 5.4 80.6% Texas 9.4 4.1 43.6%
Mass has a marriage rate almost equal to Miss's, but a divorce rate less than half as high. New York has a higher marriage rate and a much lower divorce rate. They like to get married in Ala & Tex, but the divorce rates are also much higher.
Doug