Millennials have brought down the divorce rate in the United States: a new study

They say the millennial generation is the most cautious generation – and this is evident in the decline in the divorce rate in the United States.

According to a new analysis of US Census data by the University of Maryland Professor of Sociology, Philip Cohen, the divorce rate in America has dropped by 18% between 2008 and 2016, thanks to Gen X delaying marriage until Their career and finances are stable.

Cohen specifically assigns the setback to younger women, noting that when they get married for the first time, they are more likely to be over 25 and more likely to have already obtained a bachelor's degree or more. They are also less likely to already have children when they contract a marriage. Cohen predicts that, because of these factors, today's young women "will have lower divorce rates than older women."

"The trend in new marriages is for people with less risk of divorce," writes Cohen. "The composition of new marriages, combined with the declining demographic influence of baby boomer generations, almost guarantees a drop in divorce rates in the years to come."

The millennial marriage patterns contrast sharply with those of baby boomers, who generally married young people and continued to divorce at exceptionally high rates, even in their 60s and 60s, reports Bloomberg.

Today, in the meantime, fewer people get married and those who do are much less likely to divorce, says Cohen.

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His findings also suggest that marriage is becoming more and more exclusive, as many poorer, less educated Americans choose to forego living together and often raising their children together.

"One of the reasons for the decline is that the married population is getting older and is more educated," Cohen said, according to Bloomberg. "Marriage is more and more an achievement of status, rather than something that people do regardless of how they do it."

Cohen concludes that the trends "represent progress towards a system in which marriage is rarer and more stable than in the past".