Dump the toy boy for a lasting union
Adele Horin
July 11, 2009

THE secret to a lasting marriage? It goes like this. Marry a man who is about your own age. If he is nine or more years older than you, the chances of ending up divorced double. And if your parents are still together, marry a man whose parents are also still together.

The advice comes not from an agony aunt in a women's magazine but from some of the country's top demographers.

Rebecca Kippen and Bruce Chapman, from the Australian National University, and Peng Yu, from the Department of Families, Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, have traced the marital fortunes of 2482 Australian couples over six years to see what factors lead to compatibility, and what to divorce and separation.

In short, they advise marrying someone who is more or less like you. But surprisingly, similar education levels, attitudes to religion, and country of birth are not important.

What matters is age. Marriages in which the husband was nine or more years older than the wife, or two or more years younger, had a separation rate of 17 per cent compared to about 10 per cent for their more age-compatible peers.

"Age captures a range of things about being in the same place in life, at the same time," said Dr Kippen, of ANU's Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute.

As well, couples in which the husband's parents had divorced but the wife's parents had not were almost 90 per cent more likely to separate than couples where both sets of parents were together. It also helps if the husband is over 25 when you marry, and if neither of you have children before getting married. Having a similar attitude to wanting children or another child is important, also.

Being comfortably off helps in the cause of marital stability, but not so comfortable as to be among the richest 25 per cent - they have a higher risk of separation. Being poor, unemployed and feeling financially stressed, is a deadly trifecta for marriage stability. About 20 per cent of those unemployed at the start of the survey later separated compared to 10 per cent of those who had a job.

And another thing the demographers advise: don't marry a smoker if you are a non-smoker. It is definitely a romance killer. Two smokers, however, will get along fine.

Dr Kippen said she was amazed that differing educational levels had no impact on a couple's propensity to divorce, and surprised to find believers and non-believers appeared to rub along well.

People born in different countries were at no higher risk of divorce than those from the same country. And nor were those who had lived together before marriage.

The data was drawn from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, survey with an initial sample of 7682 households. The findings will be presented at the HILDA conference in Melbourne next week.