The Cost of Divorce: How Community Marriage Policies can Help Indiana's Budget Crisis

There are many perils to estimating the financial impact of divorce, including overlooking the social and emotional consequences of marital dissolution. In addition, it is difficult to quantify the economic costs of the resulting diverse activities such as relocation, creating second households and the like. However, a researcher at Utah State University, David Schramm, has ventured into this area and concluded in soon-to-be published research that an “average” divorce costs government $30,000 and the family nearly $19,000, for a total of approximately $49,000.

Based on this figure, which is thought to be comparable to Indiana figures, we can say divorce in Indiana costs the Hoosier economy more than $1 billion dollars annually.

These calculations are based on the actual number of marriages and then estimates of divorces across the Hoosier State. Marriages are tracked by the federal Center for Disease Control, but CDC notes that Indiana's data on divorce is so flawed that it does not bother to report it. (This is true for four other states in the union). But in the year 2000, CDC reports 48,055 marriages, in the year 2001 there were 48,210 marriages and in the year 2002 there were 43,903. It is safe to say, therefore, that there are well over 40,000 marriages in the Hoosier State each year. While we don't have precise divorce statistics, 4 divorces per 1,000 residents is a national figure that is considered approximate. This suggests, on an annual basis, Indiana experiences approximately 25,000 divorces.*

Recent research, also done at the University of Utah, indicates that in areas with community marriage policies for at least seven years, the divorce rate was reduced 10 percent over the rate in communities without marriage preparation efforts. If Indiana's divorce rate was reduced 10 percent, there would be 2,500 fewer divorces due to an effective community marriage policy. Based on the savings of $50,000 per divorce, that would result in a $125 million savings across Indiana annually (2,500 x 50,000) after a community marriage policy had been in place for seven years.

* This estimate is derived from using the Census Bureau's population estimate for Indiana taken in mid 2001 of 6,115,000 residents. That would produce (at a rate of 4 per 1,000) nearly 25,000 divorces.