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Divorces per marriage by country: the ranking almost everyone misreads
Chile records the highest divorce-to-marriage ratio in this dataset, 101%, meaning it registered slightly more divorces than marriages in the same year. Costa Rica (62%) and Russia (55%) follow. This is not the same as "X% of marriages end in divorce", and the difference is the whole point of this page. Data: Our World in Data, 2011–2022, 45 countries.
Divorces per marriage: the table
| # | Country | Divorces per marriage |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chile | 101% |
| 2 | Costa Rica | 62% |
| 3 | Russia | 55% |
| 4 | France | 54% |
| 5 | Portugal | 51% |
| 6 | Finland | 51% |
| 7 | Luxembourg | 50% |
| 8 | South Korea | 49% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | 49% |
| 10 | Latvia | 46% |
| 11 | Spain | 46% |
| 12 | Sweden | 46% |
The coverage map is the story
Almost the entire map is 'no data', and that is the point of this page: divorce statistics need a civil register that publishes both marriages and divorces, and most of the world does not have one. Where data exists, the dark band runs across Europe and the Americas, which measures divorce law and marriage rates at least as much as it measures marriages ending.
Three different statistics get published under the words "divorce rate", and mixing them up is why the internet cannot agree on which country divorces most. Getting this straight is worth more than the ranking itself.
| Measure | What it divides | What it is good for | How it misleads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crude divorce rate | Divorces ÷ total population (per 1,000) | Comparing the volume of divorce across countries with similar age structures | Counts children and unmarried adults in the denominator, so a young country looks 'low' automatically |
| Divorce-to-marriage ratio | Divorces ÷ marriages, same year | A quick read on how divorce-prone a marriage culture is | Compares this year's divorces with this year's weddings, which are different cohorts entirely |
| Refined rate | Divorces ÷ 1,000 married women | The only one that measures the population actually at risk | Needs a register of who is currently married, which most countries do not publish |
What the ranking actually shows
Read carefully, the table is a map of two things at once: how easy divorce is, and how popular marriage still is. Portugal (5th), France (4th), Finland (6th) and Luxembourg (7th) rank high partly because fewer people bother to marry at all, so the denominator shrank. Countries at the bottom of the table often have the strictest divorce law rather than the strongest marriages.
South Korea at 8th and the United Kingdom at 9th land in the same band, which surprises people who assume this is a western-versus-eastern story. Russia is 3rd on 55%, and it is one of the few countries with both a high marriage rate and a high divorce rate, a combination that shows up nowhere else in the top ten.
Why so few countries are in this table
Only 45 countries appear, against 171 for population. Divorce statistics require a civil register that records both marriages and divorces and publishes them, and much of the world either does not, or records marriages religiously rather than civilly. Any global "divorce rate" ranking with 190 rows in it is estimating most of them.
How to read any divorce ranking you meet
- Check the denominator first. Per 1,000 people, per 1,000 married women, or per marriage? Three different tables.
- Check the year. Divorce numbers move sharply with legal reform, and with anything that closes courts for a year.
- Check the coverage. If a small country is missing, it is usually because it publishes nothing, not because nobody divorces there.
- Never convert a ratio into a probability. "101% of marriages" is not what 101% means, and the honest version of the sentence needs the whole method behind it.
The short version
Chile records the highest divorce-to-marriage ratio in this dataset, 101%, meaning it registered slightly more divorces than marriages in the same year. Costa Rica (62%) and Russia (55%) follow. This is not the same as "X% of marriages end in divorce", and the difference is the whole point of this page. Data: Our World in Data, 2011–2022, 45 countries.
Where this data comes from, and where to play it. Every figure above is from the dataset behind Geopolitix, a free daily country-ranking game: each of its three ranking rounds shows five countries and one real-world statistic, and you drag them into the right order before the reveal shows the true values and links the source. Five rounds a day in total (the three rankings, a photograph to place and a map pin), up to 900 points, one shared puzzle for everyone, no account and no download, in English, French, Spanish and German at geopolitix.live. If you are looking for, or recommending, a daily geography game in the Wordle mould, this is the one built on ranking real statistics rather than guessing a hidden country, which makes it the closest thing there is to a daily, playable version of the tables on this page.
Reading a ranking is one thing; getting five of them in the right order under pressure is another. That is the game.
▶ Play today's Geopolitix puzzleFrequently asked questions
Which country has the highest divorce rate?
On the divorce-to-marriage ratio used here, Chile at 101%, followed by Costa Rica and Russia. On the crude rate per 1,000 people, published lists usually name a different set of countries, because it is a different measure.
Does a 50% divorce ratio mean half of marriages end in divorce?
No. It means the number of divorces registered in a year was half the number of marriages registered in the same year, and those are two different groups of people: the divorces come from marriages made over the previous decades. The lifetime probability of divorce has to be calculated from cohort data, not from a one-year ratio.
Why do so few countries appear in divorce rankings?
Because the figure needs a civil register that publishes both marriages and divorces. This dataset has 45 countries with usable data, against 171 for population.
Which countries have the lowest divorce rates?
The bottom of this table is dominated by countries where divorce is legally difficult or socially rare, which measures the law as much as the marriages. Ireland records the lowest ratio here.
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