City has second-highest percentage of divorcees in US
Hot Springs has the second-highest percentage of divorced adults in the nation, according to a new article by 24/7 Wall Street, a financial news and opinion company.
The article, “Cities with the Most (and Least) Divorces,” says 15.8 percent of Hot Springs’ adult population is divorced, and 22.6 percent has never been married, according to a news release. No. 1 on the list is Carson City, Nev., where 17.9 percent of the adult population is divorced.
According to its website, to identify the cities with the highest percentage of divorce, “24/7 Wall St. reviewed the U.S. Census Bureau 2015 American Community Survey five-year estimates for the percentage of the population aged 15 years or older that is currently divorced for all statistically significant metropolitan statistical areas. The percentage of those married, widowed, separated, or never married also came from the 2015 ACS, as well as the median age for each metro area.”
The median age of Hot Springs’ adult population is 44.1 years old, versus 37.6 nationally.
“In 13 of the 15 metropolitan areas with the largest share of divorced adults, the typical resident is older than the national median age. By contrast,
12 of the 15 metro areas with the smallest share of divorced populations have younger populations than the national median. In the metro area with the fewest divorced adults the population is also the youngest,” the release said.
The cities with the most divorce also have a disproportionately low amount of people who have never married. Every one of the 15 cities with the largest numbers of divorcees has fewer people that have never married than the national average, the release said.
“Conversely, 10 of the 15 cities with the smallest share of residents who are divorced have above-average amounts of adults who have never married. One notable example is Ithaca, N.Y., where 49.5 percent of adults have never married — the largest share in the country,” it said.
Provo, Utah, is listed as the No. 1 city with the lowest percentage of divorced adults; according to 24/7, only 6 percent of the adult population in Provo is divorced.
The 24/7 article, released Wednesday, notes that divorce has many causes, “but it is more common in cities that share certain socioeconomic factors. For one, older populations tend to have higher divorce rates than younger populations. Marriages that end in divorce tend to last just under 10 years, so this trend may be due simply to the fact that there has been more time in these cities for marriages to go wrong.
“Cities with fewer divorcees also have more residents who have never been married before. This is likely due in part to the average age of the population, but may also reflect a cultural trait of people who are less likely to divorce being more hesitant to wed.”