Does divorce make people happy?

By Linda J. Waite

Subjects: Marriage, Longitudinal studies, Divorce, Married people, Marital conflict, Psychology

Description: Reports on a late 1980s survey of 5,232 married adults, 645 of whom rated their marriages as unhappy. Five years later two-thirds of the unhappily married who stayed married were happily married. One out of five who divorced had happily remarried. No evidence was discovered that divorce or separation typically made adults happier than staying in an unhappy marriage. "This report comes from a team of family scholars chaired by Linda J. Waite of the University of Chicago" (p. [2]).