Previously, people who were 60 years or older and had a lower income tended to stick with their partner – but nowadays it's the other way around.
The change is most evident among women, according to a study that compared the risk of divorce for people 60 years or older in different birth cohorts born 1930–1956 depending on income level.
It was still natural that it was the highly educated with high income who could afford to get divorced in the 1970s, says Linda Kridahl, associate professor of demography at Stockholm University and one of the researchers behind the study.
In 1974, a law made it easier to get divorced, and before that, only those who had the best resources had the opportunity to do so.
Women's economic situation is also likely to be a reason why more older people with low income can get divorced now. Even though women still earn less than men, women now have a much higher income, whereas they previously were more economically dependent on their men.
"It costs to be poor"
That it is now instead more high-income earners whose marriages last even in later days is likely due to several reasons, according to Kridahl.
Those who have high incomes can have greater resources to perhaps afford marriage counseling, it may be that they have multiple residences so that they don't need to be together. Those who have higher incomes also lose more when they get divorced, she says.
Torbjörn Bildtgård, lecturer in social work at Stockholm University and who researches older people's family relationships, also believes that it may be more that strains on a relationship if you have poor joint resources.
It costs to be poor, as it is said. There is much more stress in daily life that needs to be handled and that may affect the partner relationship, he says.
In the entire Western world, it is increasingly common for people to get divorced later in life, and since the millennium shift, the number of divorces for people who are 60 years or older has almost doubled in Sweden.
There are three turning points that more often lead to separations for older people, according to a study by Bildtgård and his colleague Peter Öberg, who is a professor of social work at the University of Gävle.
Pension can be a risk factor
Two of the turning points are when you retire and when the children move out.
It was very strong in our material, that you could see that "until death do us part" had been rephrased to "until the children move out", says Öberg.
Good relationships are likely to become better due to the children moving out, you become a pensioner and get more time together. But if you don't have a good relationship, the same turning points are often risk factors.
The last turning point is if one partner's health deteriorates significantly – or at least if the woman's health deteriorates, according to previous research.
In another study, you don't find an increased risk of divorces when the man's health deteriorates. But you find an increase when the woman's health deteriorates.
New spark in life
It is primarily personality changes related to diseases that are described as the cause of divorces when the relationship does not hold after one partner becomes ill, according to Öberg.
The effects of either taking the initiative to leave or being dumped seem to be reinforced by the fact that the life-changing event occurs later in life, according to Torbjörn Bildtgård.
Many of those who have taken the initiative see this as an opportunity to create the good aging they have wished for and wanted. There, the divorce can become what makes it possible for one to arrange life in the way one wants it to be when one becomes older, he says.
Getting divorced can become a way to create a new spark in life, either on one's own or in a new relationship.
Many of those who are left late in life perceive it as their life plan for good aging being taken away from them.
Instead, one discovers that one is now sitting in some one-room apartment where one cannot receive family and children and where one feels isolated.
At the top of development
Due to the separation also occurring at a later stage in life, it is also some who experience it as having too little time left to, for example, find a new life partner.
The increased number of divorces among people who are over 60 is partly due to the fact that it is generally more accepted to get divorced now than it was previously. But the increase is unlikely to continue at the same rate in the future, according to Bildtgård.
We are somewhat at the top of the development today, likely. There are not such large changes in family patterns for the generations that follow, but rather the same values.
If you take it to its extreme, some research even shows that today's young are less likely to get divorced than previous generations were. So it's possible that there will be fewer divorces in the age group ahead.
In 2024, over 44,800 couples got married in Sweden, while more than 21,600 couples got divorced.
During the 2000s, the number of divorces has varied, partly due to the fact that there are different numbers of weddings held each year and that a separation often occurs a few years after a marriage.
Most people who get divorced do so when they are between 35–49 years old. The vast majority of divorces occur between the ages of 40–44.
The average length of a marriage that ends in divorce is 12.4 years.
Source: SCB
The study is based on Swedish public registers, and it includes all married people born between 1930–1956. The people have been divided into five birth cohorts, and the researchers have followed all of them from the year they turned 60 years old until an eventual divorce. Then, the income level has been added as a parameter.
The study is unique due to the fact that many countries do not have such comprehensive registers of the population available, especially not over so many birth cohorts.
