Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on Point2Homes.
No one likes to mix love and statistics, and taking the numbers approach to love sounds a bit counterintuitive — too cold and “calculating.” But maybe the numbers and figures behind our meaningful connections and relationships could reveal the secret to everlasting love.
For instance, perhaps couples in Maine, West Virginia and Wyoming — where the median duration of marriage is the highest in the country — know something that the rest of us don’t. Or, maybe people in New Jersey, North Dakota and Utah — where divorce rates are the lowest — discovered the secret to making love last.
Do you live in the best state for love? And, more importantly, should you move to improve your odds of making love last?
To help us find answers to these questions, Point2 analysts did what they do best: They crunched all the right numbers to discover the states where love and lovers come first.
They looked at marriage duration and divorce rates in each state, the number of married people who chose to move to a different state, the number of restaurants and flower designers, and even wedding costs and interest in diamond rings, among many other factors.
Following are the states with the best marriages.
1. South Dakota
Marriage scores rank: 1
Share of married people: 51.8%
Share of divorced & separated people: 11.7%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 5.99
Median marriage duration: 21.5
2. Iowa
Marriage scores rank: 2
Share of married people: 52.2%
Share of divorced & separated people: 12%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 5.12
Median marriage duration: 21.5
3. Wisconsin
Marriage scores rank: 3
Share of married people: 50.6%
Share of divorced & separated people: 11.7%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 4.62
Median marriage duration: 22.0
4. Minnesota
Marriage scores rank: 4
Share of married people: 52%
Share of divorced & separated people: 11.2%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 4.55
Median marriage duration: 21.0
5. Nebraska
Marriage scores rank: 5
Share of married people: 52.8%
Share of divorced & separated people: 11.4%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 5.49
Median marriage duration: 20.2
6. New Hampshire
Marriage scores rank: 6
Share of married people: 51.8%
Share of divorced & separated people: 13.1%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 6.78
Median marriage duration: 21.8
7. North Dakota
Marriage scores rank: 7
Share of married people: 52.4%
Share of divorced & separated people: 10.3%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 4.92
Median marriage duration: 19.9
8. New Jersey
Marriage scores rank: 8
Share of married people: 49.6%
Share of divorced & separated people: 10.3%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 3.19
Median marriage duration: 20.6
9. Montana
Marriage scores rank: 9
Share of married people: 51.8%
Share of divorced & separated people: 13.5%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 6.57
Median marriage duration: 21.2
10. Utah
Marriage scores rank: 10
Share of married people: 55.7%
Share of divorced & separated people: 10.4%
Number of weddings per 1,000 people: 8.14
Median marriage duration: 17.2
Methodology
For this study, we analyzed 18 factors that were grouped into three categories.
The first two categories included factors like:
- the marital status of population 15 years and over
- the median duration of current marriage
- the geographical mobility in the past year by marital status
- weddings & wedding costs
- median earnings
- the Sharecare Wellbeing Index
- the number of floral designers
- the number of full-service restaurants
The third category focused on interests as they appeared in Google Trends. Values were calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is the location with the most popularity as a fraction of total searches in that location, a value of 50 indicated a location that was half as popular.
A value of 0 indicated a location where there was not enough data for this term. A higher value meant a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count.
We used a combination of ranking scores and weighted averages.
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