Higher Education is a Safeguard Against Divorce Not a Cause

The mental baggage elicited from those politically charged words is so evocative, that the stories nearly write themselves: if only modern women stopped prioritizing their girlboss careers over starting a family, society wouldn’t be in shambles, my hairline wouldn’t be receding, and I’d have me a government-issued trad wife to pick up after me. The only problem with this little catch-all monocausality is that it’s, well, complete misinformation that’s become mythologized through memes and single men with an axe to grind with “modern women” (the problem being, they aren’t getting picked.) 

I encounter this meme online all the time, citing the over-education of women as a cause of divorce. One person even mentioned the fact that educated women “file for divorce 75% of the time” as the reason educated women “should just not get married since they can’t handle not getting everything they imagine in life.” Here’s the reality: continuing your education past high school is one of the best investments you can make if you’re concerned with divorce risk. Continual education is a protective factor against divorce, singlehood, and spousal death, and this increases in tandem with higher educational attainment. In other words, not only are educated women less likely to divorce but they also get married at higher rates than their less educated counterparts and are less likely to become widows.

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