(Reuters) – Men and women in the South have higher rates of divorce than any other region of the country, while those in the Northeast have the lowest, according to a Census Bureau report on Thursday.
Statistics from “Marital Events of Americans: 2009,” show that in the South, per 1,000 men or women, divorce rates were 10.2 and 11.1 percent.
By contrast, Northeastern men and women had divorce rates at 7.2 and 7.5 percent.
The national divorce rate was almost 10 percent, at 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women.
The report is the first to examine and detail marriage, divorce and widowhood among Americans ages 15 and older, using data from the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS).
“Divorce rates tend to be higher in the South because marriage rates are also higher in the South,” Diana Elliott, a family demographer at the Census Bureau, stated in the report’s release.
