Do engineers make excellent spouses? Divorce rates by engineering specialty

A foreboding statistic often invoked as a warning for all newlywed couples is that 53% of marriages in the United States end in divorce. Granted, the statistic is not entirely accurate as the likelihood of divorce increases with the number of years married. Nevertheless, statistically lumping all data together works in certain circumstances such as when you’re looking at divorce rates amongst professions, or more specifically, amongst engineering specializations.

So, what kind of spouses do these stereotypically intelligent people make? Exceptionally stable ones, at least compared to dancers and bartenders. The average divorce rate for all the engineering professions falls roughly under 13%, versus dancers and their 43.05% divorce rate, or bartenders and their 38.43% rate.

According to a study  conducted by Professor Michael G. Aamodt from Radford University, agricultural engineers are the most stable husband and wife material, whereas stationary engineers/operators are the most volatile.

• Agricultural engineers 1.78
• Sales engineers 6.61
• Nuclear engineers 7.29
• Chemical engineers 7.48
• Biomedical engineers 8.74
• Mechanical engineers 9.22
• Civil engineers 9.35
• Environmental engineers 9.62
• Computer hardware engineers 9.94
• Petroleum engineers 9.98
• Electrical and electronic engineers 10.05
• Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 10.96
• Mining and geological engineers 11.08
• Aerospace engineers 11.11
• Computer software engineers 11.26
• Ship engineers 11.95
• Industrial engineers, including health and sanitation 12.42
• Materials engineers 12.58
• Marine engineers and naval architects 14.62
• Locomotive engineers and operators 15.77
• Stationary engineers and boiler operators 16.99

Aamodt’s study never ventured as far as to explain the “why,” but we can draw some correlations based on what we know about engineers’ education and income. First of all, high-level engineering jobs typically require advanced degrees and attract people with higher levels of education. Higher levels of education are rewarded with higher salary, thus, better equipping the engineer's family with additional income and decreasing the prospect of financial difficulties, one of the primary causes of domestic turmoil. Secondly, one may presume that engineers, being engineers, possess superior attention to detail and heightened level of communications, two vital aspects in sustaining healthy relationships.

Nevertheless, you should take the findings with a grain of salt as the study excludes people who were divorced or separated prior to the 2000 census, and people who were previously divorced and remarried were automatically grouped into the “married” cluster.

It may also be speculated that certain professions attracted specific personalities, so perhaps engineers value commitment more so than dancers.

Source: Washington Post