Philip Cohen: Statistical analysis of marriage and divorce soon to become more difficult
MPRC faculty associate Philip Cohen's work on marriage and divorce among Millennials was cited in a recent article on News.Mic. Cohen looked at rates of marriage and divorce among people born since 1980, and identified the 25 American cities where Millennials are most likely to be divorced. Portland, Oregon landed at the top of the list. But this may not truly be because young people in Portland have more unstable marriages than those living in other cities. Cohen's analysis showed that many divorced young people were actually moving to Portland after their marriages ended, not before. Reaching this conclusion required in-depth analysis of a large, reliable data set that included information not only about marriage and divorce, but also about other factors such as how many times people had been married, and how long they had lived in the same place.
The real story, says Cohen, is that much of the data used for this analysis comes from sections of the American Community Survey that the Census Bureau plans to cut in future years. Without the national data about marriage and divorce that comes from this survey, analyses like this may soon become impossible. Cohen urges scholars who work with data from the American Community Survey to review the proposed changes and comment on them before the deadline on December 30, 2014.
Link to the story on the Family Inequality blog
Listen to Cohen's interview on KQED
Read more about planned changes to the American Community Survey