The newsreader a few days ago started an article with the statement "The average length of a marriage these days is 7 years.". What? That didn't sound like a very accurate statement to me. So I decided to see where the information came from. The obvious starting point was to ask Google if it was true. It seems that it is a possible half-truth. The statement appears to relate to US statistics. I can find none for New Zealand (which does not, of course, mean that they are not available). Apparently some research in the US and an examination of US statistics shows:
However as one might imagine that is not the whole story. In fact these statistics relate only to marriages that end in divorce. Statistics for marriages ending in the death of one or other partner do not seem to be readily available.
Which all goes to show that you should never take at face value what you hear in the news media.
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