Speaker 1: It's Friday, January eight. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: The pandemic has taken a toll on relationships in many ways,
Speaker 1: but interestingly, both marriages and divorces are down. Many had
Speaker 1: to cancel the postponed weddings due to lockdowns, and on
Speaker 1: the other side, some are avoiding divorce for practical reasons
Speaker 1: and economic uncertainty. Then Steve Man, reporter at Bloomberg News
Speaker 1: joins us for why these rates may be falling and
Speaker 1: whether they might tick back up after the pandemic is over.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Ben, sure thing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: take a look back at what's been going on throughout
Speaker 1: this pandemic with regards to relationships, divorces, and marriages specifically.
Speaker 1: You know, when the pandemic started, we heard a lot
Speaker 1: of things that we're gonna happen with relationships. One of
Speaker 1: the first things I remember hearing was that there was
Speaker 1: gonna be a huge baby boom. Well that didn't really happen.
Speaker 1: You know, in the first part of the pandemic, we're
Speaker 1: hearing about a lot of you know, possible fights in
Speaker 1: marriages that we're gonna lead to a lot of divorces.
Speaker 1: That didn't really happen either. According to some of the
Speaker 1: new data that we're getting, divorces and marriages both kind
Speaker 1: of trickled down a little bit. So then tell us
Speaker 1: some of the numbers and what we're seeing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we don't have the full numbers for the entire
Speaker 1: United States, but what we do have is a study
Speaker 1: that just came out that looks at five states, including
Speaker 1: one big one, Florida. It just looks at a few
Speaker 1: months of the year, most of the year and says,
Speaker 1: how does this compare to what we expected? And it
Speaker 1: turns out that marriages and divorces are way below previous
Speaker 1: year's trends. Marriages, maybe that's not surprising. A lot of
Speaker 1: people postponed their weddings for obvious reasons last year. But
Speaker 1: with divorces, there was this idea that quarantine was putting
Speaker 1: a lot of stress on relationships. But so far, we're
Speaker 1: finding that, you know, we're not seeing the filings come through.
Speaker 1: In Florida, which is again the largest state that people
Speaker 1: looked at, marriages are thirty three percent lower than expected,
Speaker 1: and divorces are twenty eight percent lower. If you extrapolate
Speaker 1: the numbers that we're seeing in these five states nationwide,
Speaker 1: you're talking about more than three hundred thousand marriages that
Speaker 1: probably would have happened but didn't and almost two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand divorces that basically were either postponed or aren't materializing
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, this is a study that was coming
Speaker 1: out of Bowling Green State University. The five states that
Speaker 1: they looked at, as you mentioned, Florida, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and Oregon, so they all saw these numbers dropped. I
Speaker 1: think Arizona was maybe an outlier and some of the
Speaker 1: numbers there, But you know, you kind of mentioned a
Speaker 1: little bit of you know, one of the big reasons why.
Speaker 1: So a lot of things were postponed. Maybe there was
Speaker 1: a lot of closures government wide, government offices, so it
Speaker 1: was maybe harder obviously to even get those marriage plans going,
Speaker 1: and you know, you couldn't organize with large groups of people.
Speaker 1: But on the same side, divorces to even still hard
Speaker 1: to get all the paperwork filed and to go through
Speaker 1: all that. So you know, what you kind of see
Speaker 1: is a lot of couples maybe staying together for practical reasons,
Speaker 1: money reasons, other things. Yeah, and when you think about
Speaker 1: a divorce, you know there is In some ways, you
Speaker 1: can imagine it being pretty simple to divide up your assets.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of couples who are going through divorces,
Speaker 1: especially people with children or businesses or complicated finances, this
Speaker 1: is a terrible time to get a divorce. I talked
Speaker 1: to divorce lawyers and they say a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are just sort of feeling stuck and they're not
Speaker 1: ready to make a big decision right now. So the
Speaker 1: relationship might not be doing well. But for example, how
Speaker 1: do you decide on child custody issues right now? If
Speaker 1: daycares are closed or schools are closed. How do you
Speaker 1: decide what that business is worth if you know it's
Speaker 1: a restaurant that's closed or doing really badly. So a
Speaker 1: lot of those things are going to get pushed out,
Speaker 1: probably to next year, and you know, maybe we'll cease.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people will actually work through their issues, and
Speaker 1: the divorces that they would have actually happened last year
Speaker 1: maybe never happened at all, and maybe people learn to
Speaker 1: stay together. One of a contrast in all of this,
Speaker 1: we look to China for some of their numbers, and
Speaker 1: that's why I guess this kind of makes a little
Speaker 1: more significant. You know, there were a lot of filings
Speaker 1: for divorce in China when they were coming out of quarantine,
Speaker 1: So maybe this is kind of a particular thing that's
Speaker 1: going on in the United States only. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: could be different in different parts of the country, So
Speaker 1: we might not have the full picture here, but I
Speaker 1: definitely think that we'll be looking forward, you know, looking
Speaker 1: one really kind of watching these numbers and saying, is
Speaker 1: there this pent up demand for divorce and marriage or
Speaker 1: to some of the divorces and marriages that were supposed
Speaker 1: to happen, maybe they'll never happen. And you know, part
Speaker 1: of the longer term trend in the US, which might
Speaker 1: be different from other countries, is that divorce and marriage
Speaker 1: have both been declining for many years here, and so
Speaker 1: does that trend actually kind of accelerate because of the
Speaker 1: pandemic or maybe you know, people I've known some people
Speaker 1: who who have started dating this year and found people,
Speaker 1: So so maybe there's a pent up demand and maybe
Speaker 1: next year things will really bounce back. Yeah. You posed
Speaker 1: a really good question in your article. You know, how
Speaker 1: many of these weddings that might have been called off
Speaker 1: in will eventually go ahead. You know, are those relationships
Speaker 1: going to continue and go that full route? And as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, kind of how you're staying with this generation
Speaker 1: right now, waiting longer to get married things like that,
Speaker 1: like how will this impact that trend? And that's just
Speaker 1: something that we're gonna have to wait to see, but
Speaker 1: definitely something to watch out for. Yeah, for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean we've seen couples, especially young people, being much more
Speaker 1: selective about who they marry, and you have a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have just kind of foregoing marriage altogether.
Speaker 1: And you've also seen people who the people who actually
Speaker 1: end up getting married in the US these days are
Speaker 1: more likely to stay together because you know, they're sort
Speaker 1: of a self selected group of people who aren't just
Speaker 1: entering into these relationships in a casual way. So we
Speaker 1: could see those trends continue or we could see a change.
Speaker 1: This has been a crazy nine months of our lives
Speaker 1: and it'll be fascinating to see how society changes and
Speaker 1: how attitudes change. Ben Steverman, reporter at Bloomberg News. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. You're welcome. I'm Ascar Ramirez,
Speaker 1: and this has been reopening America. Don't forget the effort.
Speaker 1: Today's big news stories. You can check me out on
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