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MORE DIVORCE IN RED STATES
New York Times News Service
Nov. 14, 2004
Kentucky and Bible Belt among highest of all
By Pam Belluck

BOSTON - If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates
so low in the bluest of the blue states? It's a question that intrigues
conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.

As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are
highest are also often the areas where many conservative Christians live.

Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for
constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. But they had three of
the highest divorce rates in 2003, according to figures from the Census
Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.

The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and
the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was
Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.

In 2003, the rate in Massachusetts was 5.7 divorces per 1,000 married
people, compared with 10.8 in Kentucky, 11.1 in Mississippi and 12.7 in
Arkansas.

"Some people are saying, 'The Bible Belt is so pro-marriage, but gee, they
have the highest divorce rates in the country,'" said Barbara Dafoe
Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers
University. "And there's a lot of worry in the red states about the high
rate of divorce."

The Barna Group, a California organization that studies evangelical
Christian trends, has produced two studies about divorce that found that
born-again Christians were just as likely to divorce as those who are not
born-again Christians.

One of the reports, a survey of 7,043 people in 2001, said that: "Residents
of the Northeast and West are commonly noted for their more liberal leanings
in politics and lifestyle. However, the region of the nation in which
divorce was least likely was the Northeast."

The other study, published two months ago, said that even though the
Northeast probably had a higher rate of couples living together rather than
marrying, the divorce rate would be essentially similar even if the
cohabiting couples got hitched. And it said that "relatively few divorced
Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their
savior."

George Barna, the head of the organization, said that "a lot of really nice
Christian people try to shoot down the research by saying 'Oh, they got
divorced and then they became born again.' That's just not true."

What accounts for the nation's divorce dichotomy is the subject of much
speculation.

Some people, like Bridget Maher, an analyst on marriage and family issues at
the conservative Family Research Council, attribute it almost entirely to
the religions in the different regions. "The Northeast and Midwest have high
populations of Catholics and Lutherans and they have lower divorce rates
than other Christians," she said.

Others, like Patrick F. Fagan, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation,
say it has nothing to do with differences between faiths.

"People who worship frequently, no matter what their faith, tend to divorce
much, much, much less," said Fagan, making an argument that might suggest
that Northeasterners are more devout than other people. "All this talk about
this faith, that faith, born again, not born again, to me is irrelevant."

Many experts find the explanation to be more multidimensional, tying high
divorce rates to factors like younger age of marriage, less education and
lower socioeconomic status.

"The higher the educational level, higher the occupational level, higher the
income, the less likely you are to divorce," said William V. D'Antonio, a
sociologist at the Catholic University of America, noting that Massachusetts
has the highest rate of high school and college completion. "Kids who drop
out of high school and get married very quickly suffer from the strains of
not being emotionally mature and not having the income to help weather the
difficulties of marriage."

Whitehead, who lives in Amherst, Mass., said that New England is a region
that has "more stability" than other regions. "People stay here, their
families stay here, and there's more social and family support for people, a
more communal versus individualistic culture in New England compared to the
cowboy states."

She said religion may underscore those regional differences.

"In states with lots of evangelicals, the more individualistic Protestant
religious faiths may actually also encourage more go-it-alone attitudes than
communal ones," Whitehead said. And these are also states where the culture
encourages sexual abstinence before marriage, she said.