The Not-So-Great Reason Divorce Rates Are Declining What’s changed isn’t marriage, but the types of people who are likeliest to get married. The Atlantic | Joe Pinsker Photo from duncan1890 / Getty . In the past 10 years, the percentage of American marriages that end in divorce has fallen, and in a new paper , the University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen quantified the drop-off: Between 2008 and 2016, the divorce rate declined by 18 percent overall.
