Tuesday, August 6, 2002
Swedish study says divorce maybe contagious
A story published today by the Salt Lake Tribune reports that divorces may be contagious. Yvonne Aberg, a sociologist at Stockholm University, found that as the proportion of recently divorced co-workers increased, the chances that other married workers will subsequently divorce also increased.
Aberg used a Swedish database that consists of survey information collected annually between 1988 and 1995 from all workers at 1,500 randomly selected workplaces employing a total of 37,000 men and women.
Aberg found that men and women were 75 percent more likely to divorce during the study period if they worked in an office populated mainly by people of the opposite sex and of the same age. And the more single people working in an office, the higher the divorce rate.
The antidote to catching a divorce at the office: Have your spouse work with you. That cut the likelihood of divorce in half in Aberg's study.
