> > Who says divorce is the expected outcome of marriage?
> Statistics.
[citation needed]
> What's more likely, divorce or marriage until death?
Probably, the latter. The popular "half of all marriages will end in divorce" was from near the peak in the particular methodology it used, and was based on projecting the then-past trend and making an estimate of lifetime probabilities for new marriages based on that trend extending out into the future, and even then it was a result of second and subsequent marriages having significantly higher divorce rates than earlier marriages, with first marriages, even in the projection, being substantially below 50% probability of ending in divorce.
But its actually really hard to get a good idea of what is more likely when you don't have a way of actually sampling the space of interest (which would take reaching into the future), and various methodologies of estimating divorce risk (and even whether the rate at which marriages end in divorce is really rising or falling) come to different answers.
No, you don't get to ask for a citation when I'm asking you the question. "What's more likely, divorce or marriage until death?"
You answered...
> Probably, the latter.
I'd say probably the former. Neither of us has provided any data to back up those opinions but I don't think you can rationally look around you and honestly claim you've seen more people married until death than people who got divorced especially in light of people with multiple marriages. Every divorce counts and I'd certainly wager the number of divorces is greater than the number widows/widowers.
> No, you don't get to ask for a citation when I'm asking you the question.
I didn't ask for a citation in response to your question, I asked that in response to your answer "Statistics" to the grandparent posts question "Who says divorce is the expected outcome of marriage?"
If your claim is that statistics say that, then where are the statistics?
Statistics would be what would answer that question, i.e. it's not a who, it's math; I wasn't claiming to have those statistics. I was trying to discuss what you thought the math was and why.