[lbo-talk] One in four Saudi marriages end in divorce

[Miles Jackson]

uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
> Daily Times
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/
> 
> Sunday, December 24, 2006
> 
> One in four Saudi marriages end in divorce
> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\12\24\story_24-12-2006_pg1_4
> 
> JEDDAH: Nearly one in four marriages in the conservative Muslim kingdom of 
> Saudi Arabia ends in divorce, a newspaper quoted the Justice Ministry as 
> saying on Saturday.
> 
> For 105,066 marriage contracts registered in 2005, 24,000 divorce cases were
> recorded by the ministry, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said, quoting a ministry
> report. Officials at the Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment
> but the statistics come amid intense debate over the surge in divorce rates
> in the birthplace of Islam.

This is a pet peeve of mine: it is silly to calculate the divorce rate 
in a society by comparing the number of marriages this year to the 
number of divorces this year.  The divorced couples are drawn from the 
entire population of married couples, not just the ones who were married 
this year!  The meaningful statistic here is the ratio of divorced 
couples this year to all married couples.  That ratio may be 1 in 4, as 
the article claims, but you can't figure it out by counting the number 
of people who were married this year.

Miles