Decomposing the crude divorce rate in five countries: Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, the UK, and Australia

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the level of divorce, measured by the crude divorce rate (CDR), has increased dramatically in both the East and the West, but has recently appeared to fall or level off in some countries. To investigate whether the recent decline or stabilisation of the CDRs reflects the real trends in divorce risk, a decomposition analysis was conducted on the changes in the CDRs over the past 20 years on two western and three East Asian countries, namely, the UK, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. The following is observed: the decline in the CDRs of the UK and Australia in the 1990s, and of Taiwan and Korea in the 2000s, was mainly due to shrinkage in the proportion of the married population rather than any reduction in divorce risk; only Australia experienced a genuine reduction in divorce risk between 2001 and 2011; and the continuous increase of Singapore’s divorce level between 1990 and 2010 may be is an unintentional effect of the government’s marriage promotion policies. The shift in the population age structure, and more importantly, the drastic decline in marriage, has seriously distorted the CDRs, making them unreliable indicators for monitoring divorce trends.

Experiencing work–family enrichment as a separated parent in Australia

“…This study is the first to inquire into this issue in depth by comparing married/cohabiting with divorced/separated parents, with the reasoning that this family characteristic possibly affects the availability of, and access to, a person’s resources. This group of interest offers unique insights and is important because family dissolution and alternative family formations are very common nowadays (Chen and Yip, 2018; Skew et al, 2009). In addition, the current study addresses the underlying gendered nature of this balancing act by focusing on the within-group differences.…”

Japanese and South Korean Approaches to Overcoming Gender Inequality: A Comparative Analysis

“…In Japan, the crude divorce rate also throughout the 1990s (from 1.28 in 1990 to 2.00 in 1999), reached a peak of 2.30 in 2002 and started to decline from this point [7]. The decrease in divorce rate in the second half of the 2000s and in the 2010s should not be attributed to decline in divorce risk, rather, it reflects a decrease in the proportions of the married population [9].…”

Parental attitudes, child mental health problems and gender factor in the divorce process

“…In recent years, there has been a notable rise in the crude divorce rate in both Eastern and Western countries, although some nations have experienced contrasting trends with decreasing divorce rates. In a study examining 20 years of data from Taiwan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, it was noted that the reduction in divorce rates in these nations was primarily attributed not to a decline in divorces themselves, but rather to a decrease in the proportion of married couples within the population 4 . In Türkiye, based on data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) for 2019, marriage rates saw a decrease of 2.3% compared to the preceding year, while divorce rates increased by 8.0%, resulting in a crude divorce rate of 1.88 per thousand.…”