According to a study, the millennia are responsible for the decline in the divorce rate in the United States

The University of Maryland professor, Philip Cohen, found that from 2008 to 2016, the divorce rate in the United States had decreased by 18%. What is causing this downward trend? "The overall decline was entirely driven by young women," writes Cohen.

The study, which was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, was submitted to the meeting of the Population Association of America in 2019, an annual conference for demographers and sociologists to present research.

To measure the divorce rate, Cohen compared the number of divorces to married women. By controlling other factors like the aging of the population, the results show only a drop of 8%, "but the pattern is the same," notes Cohen.

Since the 1990s, the prevalence of divorce among people under 45 seems to be stabilizing, while it continues to increase in people over 45, writes Cohen. He calls the gout "all the more remarkable" as Americans increasingly agree to divorce and live together before marriage.

While the trend is notable, there are clear factors that contribute to the millennial generation, aged between 22 and 37, according to Pew Research, and some Generation X, aged 38 to 53, remain together.

"One of the reasons for the decline is that the married population is getting older and is more educated," Cohen told Bloomberg. The study notes that newly married women are now "more likely to be married, more likely to have a bachelor's degree or higher education, less likely to be under 25 and less likely to have their own children in school. the household ". Cohen writes that anything can affect the risk of divorce.

Since these newly married couples are older and more educated, the study also predicts that the divorce rate will continue to decline.

More: Broken hearts: an overview of the divorce capital of all states

However, these changing trends indicate that marriage is becoming more exclusive in terms of socioeconomy.

"Marriage is becoming more of a status achievement, rather than something that people are doing regardless of how they do it," Cohen told Bloomberg. The study suggests that couples expect to be more economically stable to get married and that some poorer Americans do not marry at all.

"The trends described here represent progress toward a system in which marriage is rarer and more stable than in the past, representing an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality," writes Cohen.