The post The States with the Lowest Divorce Rates in America first appeared on Crafting Your Home.
Divorce rates vary a lot more across the country than most people realize, and the reasons behind those differences are rarely simple. A state’s number can be shaped by everything from its average marriage age to how many people even get married there in the first place, not by how “good” its residents are staying married.
Here’s what the most recent verified government data actually shows, and just as importantly, what it doesn’t tell us.
The Data Behind This Ranking
This list is based on the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) report, “Divorce Rates by State: 1990, 1995, and 2000-2023,” using provisional 2023 data, the most recent full-year state-by-state dataset currently published by the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System.
The rate used here is the crude divorce rate: the number of divorces per 1,000 total population in a state, based on where the divorce occurred, not the entire country’s population. This is one consistent measurement applied evenly across the ranking, not a mix of different formulas or years.
One important disclosure before the list: five states- California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota, and New Mexico- do not report divorce data to the CDC and have no figure in this dataset at all. That means they cannot be evaluated for this ranking one way or the other. This is a reporting gap, not evidence that those states have low or high rates.
States With the Lowest Reported Divorce Rates (2023)
Louisiana 0.9 per 1,000
Louisiana’s 2023 rate is the lowest in the dataset, but it comes with a caveat worth flagging directly. The state’s reported rate has fluctuated unusually from year to year in CDC records, including several years with no data at all, which suggests incomplete or inconsistent reporting rather than a stable, verified trend. It’s included here because it’s in the official CDC table but read it with that limitation in mind.
Illinois 1.2 per 1,000
Illinois has shown a steady, multi-year decline in its reported divorce rate, dropping from 2.6 in 2015 to 1.2 in 2023 according to CDC records, a more gradual and consistent pattern than Louisiana’s.
Kansas 1.7 per 1,000
Kansas has also trended downward over the past decade, from 2.8 in 2015 to 1.7 in 2023.
Massachusetts: 1.8 per 1,000
According to CDC data, Massachusetts has consistently reported some of the lowest divorce rates in the country.
Iowa 1.9 per 1,000
Iowa’s rate has declined gradually since 2015, when it was reported at 1.2, dipped further, then settled at 1.9 in 2023.
Arizona 2.0 per 1,000
Arizona’s divorce rate has fallen substantially over the past two decades, from 6.9 in 1990 to 2.0 in 2023, according to CDC records.
Texas 2.1 per 1,000
Texas reported a rate of 2.1 in 2023, continuing a long-term downward trend from 5.5 in 1990.
Wisconsin,2.1 per 1,000 (tied)
Wisconsin’s rate has remained relatively stable in recent years, holding in a narrow band between 2.0 and 2.6 since 2018.
Note: The District of Columbia reported a 2023 rate of 1.9 per 1,000, which would place it among the lowest as well, but D.C. is a federal district, not a state, so it’s noted here rather than included in the state ranking above.
Related: 7 financial-problems-that-tear-older-couples-apart
What a Low Divorce Rate Does and Doesn’t Tell Us
It’s tempting to read this list as a ranking of which states are “best” at marriage. That’s not what the data supports, and the CDC’s own figures make that clear.
Marriage rates matter.
A state with fewer marriages overall will naturally have fewer divorces to report, regardless of relationship quality. A low divorce rate can sometimes reflect a lower marriage rate in that state.
Age at marriage plays a role.
Research from the National Center for Family & Marriage Research has found that people who marry later tend to have different divorce patterns than those who marry younger, and average marriage age varies by state.
Population characteristics matter too.
A state’s age distribution, for instance, how many residents are in their 20s versus their 60s, affects how many people are even in the population “at risk” of divorce in a given year.
Reporting differences is not real.
As shown above, several states don’t report to the CDC at all, and at least one state in this list (Louisiana) shows reporting patterns inconsistent enough to raise questions about data completeness.
Related: The Mind-Body Connection: Why Mental Health Fuels Better Intimacy
Remarriage patterns complicate things further.
National research shows second and later marriages have higher divorce rates than first marriages, so a state’s remarriage rate can shift its overall number independent of how “stable” first marriages are there.
Put simply: a low crude divorce rate is a real, measurable statistic, but it reflects demographics and reporting as much as anything else. It isn’t a scorecard for how happy or healthy marriages are in any particular state.
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