0:00

Fifteen years ago, 23-year-old

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Norwegian student Martina Vik Magnussen

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was killed in an apartment near

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Mayfair. 23-year-old Martina Vik

0:09

Magnussen was found partially buried in the

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basement. Before being questioned, the

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only suspect in the case had fled the UK

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to Yemen. I made a promise to Martina's

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family to find out what happened. Murder

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in Mayfair, part of the documentary Find

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It wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast.

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We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the

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news and in life. I'm

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Ben Carter.

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This week we're talking about divorce and

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how we can measure it. India 1%, Vietnam 7%,

0:50

Tajikistan 10%, Iran...

0:54

This is a recent tweet that went

0:56

viral which claims to outline divorce

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rates around the world. Luxembourg 79%,

1:01

Spain 85%, Portugal 94%.

1:11

The tweet, on the World of Statistics

1:13

account, ranked 33 countries

1:15

and their supposed divorce rates from

1:17

lowest to highest. The lowest

1:20

rate was for India with a divorce rate

1:22

of just 1%. While

1:24

Portugal ranked the highest with a whopping 94%.

1:29

The tweet has had a huge 35 million

1:31

views and thousands of comments.

1:34

But there's no source attached to these extraordinary

1:36

numbers and the account hasn't

1:38

responded to our requests for more information.

1:42

So we've taken it upon ourselves to

1:44

investigate. First

1:46

of all, I think we should be clear what we

1:49

are measuring. When you hear a divorce

1:51

rate of 50%, you probably

1:53

think that means half of marriages end

1:55

in divorce.

1:56

But to get that kind of figure, you need

1:59

to follow a marriage and to... until it ends with either

2:01

the death of one of the partners or

2:03

in divorce. That takes a

2:05

long time and we don't have that data.

2:09

We showed the tweet to Dr Cheng Tong,

2:11

Leah Wang from the Institute for the Future

2:13

in San Francisco. She

2:16

says that without a source, it's impossible

2:18

to say for sure where these numbers came

2:20

from. But she can make

2:22

an educated guess.

2:24

So it's kind of vague, but based

2:27

on my experience, seeing some

2:29

similarly shockingly high,

2:32

quote-unquote, divorce rate, my

2:34

guess is that they can be

2:36

calculated by having

2:38

the number of divorces

2:41

registered in a certain year

2:43

divided by the

2:45

number of marriages registered

2:48

in that same year. And

2:50

we don't know what year it is

2:52

from. So it's a fairly straightforward

2:55

way to calculate a divorce rate. But

2:57

according to Dr. Leah Wang, it's

2:59

not the right way. The problem

3:01

with the numbers on the tweet is

3:03

that it's calculated by the numbers

3:06

of divorces happen in a year divided

3:09

by the numbers of marriage in the same year. But

3:12

really, you're comparing two different

3:14

things because the

3:16

numbers of divorces in

3:18

a certain year does not

3:20

necessarily come from the marriage that

3:23

take place in the same year.

3:25

It's granted that some

3:27

marriage may dissolve in

3:30

less than a year. But you

3:32

can clearly understand

3:34

that not all divorces

3:37

happen in a year come from those

3:39

marriage that take place in the same year.

3:45

So instead of looking at whether marriages end

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in divorce, a figure calculated

3:49

this way is really just comparing

3:51

the number of marriages in a year to the

3:54

number of divorces in that year. But

3:56

this can give you some weird results.

3:59

town which in one year has more divorces

4:02

than marriages. That might produce

4:04

figures suggesting a 120%

4:06

divorce rate. There

4:08

are also other factors that distort these

4:10

figures. The tweet says Portugal

4:13

has a divorce rate of 94%. We

4:15

can't source that figure at all ourselves.

4:19

There is another figure in the public domain for Portugal

4:21

which is 91% for the year 2020, calculated

4:25

by comparing the number of marriages in Portugal

4:28

to the number of divorces. But as I'm

4:30

sure we'll end up saying over and over again

4:32

on more or less, data collected

4:34

in 2020 needs to be treated

4:37

with the utmost caution

4:38

because of the global pandemic.

4:40

Here's

4:42

Marina Adshaid, an assistant professor

4:45

at the Vancouver School of Economics. If

4:48

it's in 2020, how many people were getting

4:50

married in 2020, right? At 2021 even, not upper

4:55

of any people were getting married because it was so difficult

4:57

in that time to have weddings.

5:01

And so a drop in the number of

5:03

marriages makes it look like the divorce

5:05

rate is going up. It looks like marriage

5:07

quality is declining and people aren't staying together

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but it's really just a decline in the

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number of marriages. So what is

5:13

the best way to compare divorce rates between

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countries? There is another broader

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measure known as the crude divorce rate which

5:21

is the number of divorces per thousand people

5:23

per year. That's used by a lot

5:25

of countries and international organisations, again

5:28

because the figures are often easier to come

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by than other methods.

5:32

If you look at these figures, Belarus

5:35

and Russia have the highest rate of divorce

5:37

per person. Portugal is

5:39

nothing special, in fact it's actually

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lower than the European Union average. India

5:44

may well have the lowest rate but

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it's difficult to be certain because there

5:48

are collection.

5:51

And that brings us to the broader question

5:53

of how difficult it is to make comparisons

5:56

between divorce rates in different countries

5:58

with different legal systems. and social

6:00

expectations.

6:02

Back to Dr. Leah Wang. When you're

6:04

talking about marriage and divorce,

6:06

it can mean very different thing

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for people in

6:11

Asia and in Europe.

6:14

For example, they face very different child

6:17

custody issues, alimony issues,

6:20

division of property issues. So

6:22

that can mean very different thing.

6:25

Coming back, then, to our original tweet, that

6:27

might help explain the very low Indian

6:29

figure of 1%. It's a

6:31

place where divorce is more heavily frowned upon

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and there isn't a unified method of recording

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divorces across the country.

6:38

But is the tweet and the information in

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it actually doing anyone any

6:43

favours? Marina Adshay doesn't

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think so.

6:46

I don't like the tweet.

6:48

And I'm going to tell you why I don't like the tweet.

6:51

It's not because I don't think people should know the evidence,

6:54

but I think that the tweet gives people misinformation.

6:57

And people make meaningful life

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decisions based on that

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type of information. I can't tell you how many

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times people have said to me, I'm never

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going to get married because 50% of marriages

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end in divorce. Well,

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that's absurd, right? I mean, first

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of all, it's not true. That's

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not accurate data. But also, nobody

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is like the representative person. You

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are not the average person. And

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we know that different groups of people have very

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different experiences in marriage. So we know

7:27

that as populations get better educated,

7:29

divorce rates fall.

7:31

We know that when people wait

7:33

longer to get married, people

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are more likely to stay married.

7:38

That half of marriages end in divorce

7:40

figure isn't true. Quite

7:43

a lot of Western countries have a 40% divorce rate

7:45

after 30 years. But

7:47

according to Marina Adshaid, divorce

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rates on the whole appear to be declining.

7:52

One of the reasons why divorce rates have fallen so much,

7:55

which is just not apparent

7:57

in that tweet, is that divorce rates

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in...

7:59

North America and many

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other countries are back to the

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levels that they were in the 1970s. We

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saw a big surge in the 80s and 90s

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when

8:09

divorce laws were becoming more liberal, but

8:12

divorce rates have been falling pretty

8:14

consistently for the last 20 years. And

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that's because for a variety of reasons,

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but the main one is that people

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are delaying getting married. They're

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waiting until they're more established.

8:27

They're having social lives in their 20s,

8:30

they're meeting other people and they're looking for

8:33

more meaningful connections.

8:36

And those marriages are more likely to last.

8:39

And so we've seen this big decline in divorce

8:41

rates.

8:42

That fact that we keep touting that 50% number

8:46

for countries where we've seen divorce rates, I think really

8:48

belies the fact that marriages

8:51

actually have improved. The quality of marriages

8:53

is improving over time

8:55

as people wait a little bit longer

8:57

to get married. Our

8:59

thanks to Dr Cheng Tong Lea Wang from

9:01

the Institute for the Future in San Francisco

9:04

and Marina Adshaid, assistant professor

9:07

at the Vancouver School of Economics. That's

9:10

it for this edition of More or Less. We'll

9:12

be back next week.

9:13

If you want to get in touch, you can email us

9:16

at moreorless at bbc.co.uk.

9:20

But for now,

9:21

goodbye. In 2008,

9:26

23-year-old Norwegian student

9:29

Martina Vik Magnussen went

9:31

missing after a night out with friends in

9:33

London. I wonder what on

9:35

earth could have happened. We were so

9:37

obsessed with just finding her. Then...

9:41

Police investigating the

9:41

murder of a Norwegian socialite in central

9:44

London. Hours after her death, the

9:46

only suspect in the case fled the UK

9:49

to Yemen. His name is Farouk

9:51

Abdul-Haq. He's never been questioned

9:53

by the police. Nobody's been able

9:55

to speak to him. Until now.

9:57

I'm

10:03

Noelle McAfee and I've been following

10:05

this story since Martina was killed,

10:07

making a promise to Martina's family

10:09

to find out what happened. Murder

10:12

in Mayfair.

10:13

You can listen to the whole story now. Search

10:16

for the documentary wherever you get your

10:19

BBC podcasts.