• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Kids come first, or spouse comes first?

CycloneWanderer said:
I would like to disagree with your conclusion on the article. He more or less looked at how the overall divorce rate is not an important piece of data without taking situational variables into account (e.g., age, education, etc.). There was no evidence suggesting that there is a difference between rates of divorce between first and second marriages. Nothing was said for 3rd+ marriages.

So, if you are a college-educated woman who is older than 25 (or marrying one), the likelihood of marriage ending in divorce is much lower than the overall figure (~20%). If you are a 17 year old high school dropout (or are marrying one), your chance of divorce is well over the 40% average.
Click to expand...

None of the stated methods I read was THAT method: picking out YOUR group to try to determine YOUR divorce rate among people like you. That's not what averages and percentages of populations are all about. That may be helpful in trying to determine the likelihood of your own divorce, if someone wants to know (no one ever thinks they'll get divorced, though). Almost all experts use an adult population number.

Same thing with medical condition percentages. X% of the US adult population died of colon cancer. That is a fact, a stat. That is the one cited by the AMA. But you can then look at the % for men over 50, % for women over 60, and so forth.

Example: There's an X% of likelihood that adults in the U.S. will get colon cancer. BUT for me personally, I am not likely to get it, so my % is lower than the average. That's because almost none of the risks for it apply to me. So I'm in a subcategory where the % is lower. But that does not affect the statistic that X% of adults in the S will get colon cancer.

Your article author merely identified the risk factors and determined they didn't apply to him or his readers' category, and therefore, there it is less likely he/his readers will get divorced. Maybe that's true. But that doesn't affect the stat that 40-50% of adults in the US will get divorced.
 
JumpinJack said:
None of the stated methods I read was THAT method: picking out YOUR group to try to determine YOUR divorce rate among people like you. That's not what averages and percentages of populations are all about. That may be helpful in trying to determine the likelihood of your own divorce, if someone wants to know (no one ever thinks they'll get divorced, though). Almost all experts use an adult population number.

Same thing with medical condition percentages. X% of the US adult population died of colon cancer. That is a fact, a stat. That is the one cited by the AMA. But you can then look at the % for men over 50, % for women over 60, and so forth.

Example: There's an X% of likelihood that adults in the U.S. will get colon cancer. BUT for me personally, I am not likely to get it, so my % is lower than the average. That's because almost none of the risks for it apply to me. So I'm in a subcategory where the % is lower. But that does not affect the statistic that X% of adults in the S will get colon cancer.

Your article author merely identified the risk factors and determined they didn't apply to him or his readers' category, and therefore, there it is less likely he/his readers will get divorced. Maybe that's true. But that doesn't affect the stat that 40-50% of adults in the US will get divorced.
Click to expand...

Except most people can choose when they get married and have some degree of choice in how much education they achieve. Your own example works against your argument. You don't personally care much about the overall chance of colon cancer; you care about the chances that YOU get colon cancer. Most people thinking about marriage aren't too concerned about the overall chance of divorce; they care about the odds that THEY will get divorced. They also care about the factors that will impact those odds favorably (e.g., >25yoa, educated, etc.). The fact that we get such large deviations from the average depending on situational factors (~20% in either direction) means that the overall average is misleading. It is like giving the overall rate of sickle cell disease in Americans (3 out of every 10,000). That's a misleading statistic considering 1 out of every 365 African-Americans are born with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom