Remarriage analysis in context with marriage rates and spinsterhood

I’ve been looking over the remarriage rates in context with the previous post on marriage rates and spinsterhood.

Interestingly, the Pew research has these stats for remarriage:

This is more interesting when you bring into the responses to the surveys.

This may reflect, in part, the fact that men who have been divorced or widowed are more likely to want to remarry than are similarly situated women. Some 29% of eligible men say they want to remarry, and 36% are not sure, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey; only 30% say they do not want to marry again. In contrast, just 15% of previously married women want to remarry, and 27% are not sure; about half of these women (54%) report that they do not want to remarry.

29% of men say they want to remarry, 36% are not sure, and 30% say they don’t want to remarry. No clue where the other 5% went. Alternatively, 54% of women do not want to remarry.

• 29% + 36% = 65% who want to remarry or are not sure which almost exactly matches the rate of men who remarry at 64%.
• 54% of women do not want to remarry and 52% of women remarry which almost exactly matches the stats. So of the women who want to remarry or are not sure, almost all of them do.

Now, look at this in the context of initiated divorce rates. About 70% of divorces are initiated by women.

• 29% of men want to remarry and 30% of the men initiate divorces. This almost exactly coincides as well.
• 15 + 54% = 69% of women want to remarry and don’t want to remarry which is 69% of women which almost matches the 70% of divorces initiated by women. Women generally divorce because they are so unhappy with the marriage and/or they want to remarry someone else. Generally, singleness is still a stigma for women.

It’s likely that the 54% of women who “never want to remarry” married an average to below average joe and couldn’t stomach it while the other 15% of women were looking for greener pastures.

Obviously, there is some overlap between the different categories and not every man who initiates a divorce also wants to remarry, but the statistics are remarkably consistent for the approximate amounts of initiated divorces and remarriage rates.

Now, before women go all crazy about divorcing and seeing that they can remarry, there is additional context of course.

Overall, this chart shows us something we absolutely already knew about remarriage for women. The cumulative remarriage rate for women is overall sitting at 52% which is dragged down by the 65% and older and the young remarriage rates.  Almost all of the remarriages are happening by the women in the 18-24 and 25-34 age ranges.

By 34, if a woman is not remarried, there’s only a very slim chance she will get married again. 45% to 57% by 35-44 and 62% by 45-54 and 63% by 55-65. In other words, approximately:

• 3 in 10 women get remarried if they’re 18-24
• 1 in 7 women get remarried if they’re 25-34
• 1 in 10 women get remarried if they’re 35-44
• 1 in 20 women get remarried if they’re 45-54
• 1 in 100 women get remarried if they’re 55-65

The remarriage rates for women are grim for women if they’re older than 25, and very grim if they’re older than 34, and nigh impossible if they’re 55 and older.

Other interesting sex and marriage interactions

If you remember back to the Kinsey marriage sex statistics I posted on early last year, there are some interesting findings to go with this.

Other data show similar qualities:

More than 7 times a week: 3%
7 times a week: 1%
6 times a week: 3%
5 times a week: 9%
4 times a week: 11%
3 times a week: 13%
2 times a week: 21%
once a week: 25%
once a month: 8%
less than once a month: 9%

Approximately 17% (once a month to less than once a month) are sexless. I would assume that most “once a weekers” are probably unhappy with that. The sex drive of men is typically higher than that of women, but women can become dissatisfied with lack of frequency as well.

We know that at the lowest 40% of marriages end in divorce. So if we assume that most of the sexless ~20% of marriages end in divorce, a large portion of those in the 25% once a week range are going to divorce as well. This doesn’t take into account the potential dissolution of marriages with more frequency sex that have other problems.

Of the 40% of the first marriage divorces, 20% of women never want to marry again, 6% want to get married again, and 14% are not sure.

I would contend that the 6% who want to get married again and the 14% who are not sure are probably the women who were close to the 17% or 15-20% range of sexless marriages. Those women in the 20% range who were potentially had to output “duty sex” on a regular basis such as 1x per week probably had a negative impact on their perception of marriage that they don’t want to experience it again.

Contrast to previous article

The previous article came to these conclusions.

Here are the rates:

• Currently, 85% of all women have gotten married by 45.
• About 10% cohabitate.
• Predicted by 2049 that 25-30% of women will have not been married by 45.

This leaves us with:

• 6% never want to get married
• 10% cohabitation
• 70-75% married
• 94% want to get married.

This leaves us with:

• 9-14% “unwanted spinsterhood” — about 1 in 10 women
• 19-24% “unwanted cohabitation and unwanted spinsterhood” — about 2 in 10 women

That’s a decent chunk of the female population that will have to settle for unwanted cohabitation and unwanted spinsterhood. We’ll see how this plays into affecting the narrative. The loudest cries are always at the margins.

According to the divorce rate of all divorces which is about 50% — ~40% first marriage, 60% second marriage, ~70% third marriage — the 70-75% of marriages approximately 28-30% of first marriages end up in divorce. Since about 50% of the women in those first marriages remarry, it gives us these stats:

• 42-45% married for “death til us part”
• 14-15% of women in 2nd and 3rd marriages
• 14-15% of women divorced single hood
• 9-14% “unwanted spinsterhood” — about 1 in 10 women
• 19-24% “unwanted cohabitation and unwanted spinsterhood” — about 2 in 10 women

This leaves us with approximately:

• 33-39% “unwanted cohabitation, unwanted spinsterhood, divorced singlehood/single mom” or about 1 in 3 to 2 in 5 women.

Very grim indeed.