Remarriages

This article presents descriptive statistics for remarriages according to the combined marital histories of brides and grooms. In 1988, 745,000 divorced men and 748,000 divorced women remarried. For each sex, 61% married divorced, 35% married single, and 4% married widowed partners. On average, the grooms were 39 and the brides were 35 years of age, but those who married single partners were younger (35 and 31, respectively) and better educated than average. In 1988, 72,000 widowed men and 77,000 widowed women remarried, at ages 61 and 53. They married widowed or divorced partners in similar proportions. By 1988, husbands and wives who jointly remarried at ages 25 to 44 in 1972 had lower divorce levels than did those who were first married as teenagers. This indicates that marrying at a young age was a stronger determinant of divorce than was a previous marriage of either or both spouses.