Divorce Rate Lowest Since 1980, Still High in Washington, DC

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:37PM EST · Published Nov 19, 9:39AM EST

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Divorce rates dropped 25% from 1980 to 2015. However, in several areas, led by Washington, D.C., the rates are still high.

According to The Bowling Green State University National Center for Family and Marriage Research’s data for 2015:

Washington, D.C., continued to have the highest divorce rate, with nearly 30 marriages per 1,000 ending in divorce.
Hawaii continued to have one of the lowest divorce rates, with only 11 marriages per 1,000 ending in divorce.
The divorce rate was 16.9 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2015, down from 17.6 in 2014.
Washington, D.C. has had the highest divorce rate for the past two years
Hawaii was the only state with a divorce rate under 12 in 2015.
The divorce rate decreased by 25% from 1980 (22.6) to 2015.
Just over one million women (1,110,579) divorced in 2015.

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The divorce rate (represented as the number of divorces per 1,000 married women aged 15 and older) continued to decline in 2015, reaching a 40-year low.

Five Highest and Lowest Divorce Rates, 2015:

1. Wash, D.C., 29.9
2. Wyoming, 27.9
3. Nevada, 25.7
4. Arkansas, 25.3
5. Alaska, 22.7
47. New Jersey, 12.9
48. Delaware, 12.9
49. Rhode Island, 12.6
50. Wisconsin, 12.4
51. Hawaii, 11.1

U.S., 16.9

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.