Can I Marry a Woman Half My Age?
Desiring God | 23 July 2021 | Ask Pastor John
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHj7skKgOis
At 6:53 in the video, he states that "one group of statistics that I consulted said that a gap of 10 years increases the likelihood of divorce by 39 % ..."
He concludes, a couple with 30 + years age gap has no chance, as the (increased) likelihood is 172 %.
Now, what he did not understand is, an increased likelihood and a likelihood are not the same thing.
If the likelihood for all other factors is 10 %, this means if the age gap is 30 + years, the likelihood will be 17.2 % instead (still 82.8 % likelihood of not divorcing).
Now, there are a few problems apart from this. Here is the study by the actual expert, but with the age gap statistic left out:
What makes for a stable marriage?
PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 11, 2014 BY DR. RANDAL S. OLSON
https://randalolson.com/2014/10/10/what-makes-for-a-stable-marriage/
Here is a reference to it by a divorce lawyer:
Age Gap and Marriage
Kelly Chang law and mediation offices
https://purposedrivenlawyers.com/age-gap-and-marriage/
And I know it's the same study, because not only do the staple diagrammes look the same way, but also, the Kelly Chang page actually linked to a link that linked to Dr. Randal S. Olson.
So, the study by Randal Olson actually says a lot of other factors too.
For instance, wedding expense and wedding attendance.
200 + attending the wedding = divorce 92 % less likely. Than reference point, in this case only the couple.
$0—1 k = divorce 53 % less likely than the reference point, which in this case is not an extreme, but expenses the area of $5—10 k.
So, let's take again "other factors at 10 %" ... if I can get 201 to attend the wedding, that lowers the risk to 0.8 %, and if I can get a fairly cheap place where the wedding guests bring their own food, and not pay too much to the priest, that is like ... OK, let's skip that, and take another route. Decimal fractions are easier for me than percentage fractions.
0.1 risk at other factors.
0.47 risk reduction by low wedding costs.
0.08 risk reduction by many wedding guests.
1.72 risk enhancement by 30 + years age gap.
0.1 * 0.47 * 0.08 * 1.72 = 0.0064672
That's overall a risk of 0.6 % of divorcing.
That's one part of what was wrong in how Pastor John referenced the study. He seems to have thought that 172 % increased divorce risk means sth like the 172 % are added to the other risk factors. No. It's multiplication. This reminds me how "5 in 4 people struggle with math" ... if you have heard the quote.
But there is more.
There was no statistics on how number of children in common would affect the divorce risk. I'd say it's higher the fewer you have, and I think Mr and Mrs Duggar are still married despite a very major crisis. By contrast, Mr Hovind ...
He married his wife Jo in 1973 and they had three children between 1977 and 1979.
... is not married to her any more. They shouldn't have waited four years. They shouldn't have stopped after 3.
Obviously, marrying a much younger woman and NOT having children will have a very different effect from marrying a much younger woman and getting ON to making children, because I am still fertile and so is she.
But there is even more than that!
Earlier today, I ran across an interesting study on divorce titled 'A Diamond is Forever' and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration. The authors of this study polled thousands of recently married and divorced Americans (married 2008 or later) and asked them dozens of questions about their marriage: How long they were dating, how long they were engaged, etc. After running this data through a multivariate model, the authors were able to calculate the factors that best predicted whether a marriage would end in divorce.
In other words, the idea behind the risk is ...
- taken from a poll, not comprehensive statistics
- and obtained for each variable by analysis in a "multivariate model" ...
And, I was actually wrong about where the study came, from, Randal S. Olson was actually not the one conducting the study, he linked to it ... and the methodology doesn't seem over solid, as said.
‘A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration
Andrew Francis-Tan, Hugo M. Mialon, 17 Pages Posted: 27 Sep 2014
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480
Data collection was conducted in July and August 2014. We offered mTurk workers $0.50 to $0.75 to complete the survey. Altogether, 3,370 people completed the survey. We excluded respondents who had a non-US IP address, reported having a same-sex marriage, reported an age at marriage of less than 13 years old, or were above age 60. We also excluded respondents who finished the survey in less than 2 minutes and provided inconsistent responses about age of partner, which was asked at the beginning and end of the questionnaire. After these filters, the final sample consisted of 3,151 respondents
So, if the guy who was 48 and wanted to marry a 24 year old woman refrained from it due to the advice from Pastor John, this could be a question of "doctrines of demons ... forbidding to marry" ...
Hans Georg Lundahl
Thirty Martyrs of Via Labicana
22.XII.2023
Romae, via Lavicana, inter duas Lauros, natalis sanctorum triginta Martyrum, qui omnes una die, in persecutione Diocletiani, martyrio coronati sunt.
Item Romae sancti Flaviani Expraefecti, viri beatae Martyris Dafrosae atque patris beatarum Virginum et Martyrum Bibianae ac Demetriae; qui, sub Juliano Apostata, pro Christo inscriptione damnatus, et ad Aquas Taurinas, in Etruria, in exsilium missus, illic in oratione spiritum Deo reddidit.
PS, another guy, who did not specify where he was from, wrote (as if this were a fact all around the globe) that "socially acceptable" involved a "creepiness rule" but this was actually too lenient.
- The "rule" was a man could date someone half his age plus seven.
- The guy claimed this rule was way too permissive. But he didn't state where that was so. Obviously, it was not the the case in 17th C. Zerbst:
56, 57; August der Jüngere (* 10. April 1579 in Dannenberg, Fürstentum Lüneburg; † 17. September 1666 in Wolfenbüttel) Herzog zu Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Fürst von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, regierte von 1635 bis zu seinem Tode 1666 und galt als einer der gelehrtesten Fürsten seiner Zeit. / Dorothea von Anhalt-Zerbst (* 25. September 1607 in Zerbst; † 26. September 1634 in Hitzacker) aus der Dynastie der Askanier war eine Prinzessin von Anhalt-Zerbst und durch Heirat Herzogin zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg und Fürstin von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. ... Am 26. Oktober 1623 wurde sie in Zerbst die zweite Ehefrau des Herzogs August den Jüngeren von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1579–1666). - He was 44, she was 16.
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : A Generation or Two More Back
https://filolohika.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-generation-or-two-more-back.html
PPS, I may look older than I am, because I am getting too little sleep, and yes, it has to do with stressful situations all over my situation, and no, returning to Sweden does not seem promising to me, hence, I signed "Paris" and had to correct to Nanterre University with an apology. My bad./HGL
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