ISLAMARADA, Fla. — Divorce is as common in the Florida Keys as fresh grouper and cold beer. Census statistics released this week show that Monroe County - which includes the cluster of 1,700 islands off South Florida - has the second-highest percentage of divorced residents.
A little more than 18 percent of the people living in Monroe County are divorced, second only to Indiana's Wayne County, which had 19 percent. Nationwide, 10.7 percent of people over 15 are divorced, according to the American Community Survey census data.
Three of the top 10 counties that divorced people call home are in Florida - rural Putnam County in northeast Florida and urban Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast make up the other two. Indiana had a total of three counties in the top 10 as well. Along with WayneCounty, Floyd and Madison counties made the list.
Two Arkansas counties - Garland and P ulaski - ranked 25th and 33rd, respectively, for the percentage of divorced residents.
The census figures show that while the number of unmarried people continued its 10-year climb, the ranks of married people in the United States rose by nearly 6 million last year, bucking a decade-long decline.
The number of marriedpeople in Arkansas declined by 28,067, or about 2.3 percent, last year from 2007. Married couples represented 54.3 percent of the state population in 2008 compared with 56 percent the year before.
The number of divorced people rose nationally, but only slightly.
Divorced people in Arkansas represented 12.5 percent of the population, up from 11.8 percent in 2007.
Among other marriageand divorce-related findings from the census data:
Oklahoma has the highest rate of people who have been married three times or more.
Utah and Idaho tied for the youngest median bride age, at 23.5 years old.
Residents of Wayne County, Ind., don't see why their home should be the divorce capital of America. The water tower in Richmond, Ind., the county's largest city, welcomes visitors to "A Great All-American City."
"It just doesn't make all that much sense," said Michael Jackson, an associate professor of psychology at Earlham College, a private university in Richmond. "We find it really questionable. It just sounds funny."
Indiana is one of a handful of states that don't track divorce statistics. So it's hard to tell whether the percentage is caused by a large number of divorces or a large number of young single people moving out of the county to attend college, or whether it's just a statistical anomaly.
Divorce counselors say the economy could be partly to blame for adding more stress to marriages. Indiana has been hit hard by the collapse of the automobile and manufacturing industries. Wayne County had an average annual unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in 2008 - when the census data were collected - a rate above the state average at the time but still below many other areas of the state and country.
Some folks in the Florida Keys are quick to say that it's not that people are actually divorcing in droves there - it's that divorced people go to the area to start new lives.
"The Keys are a great place to hide," said divorcee Linda Mortimer, who is 60. When asked from what, she said: "Child support. Alimony."
A man sitting next to Mortimer at the Ocean View bar finished his martini in a plastic cup. His chuckle nearly drowned out the Creedence Clearwater Revival song playing on the radio.
"The IRS. The CIA. Family," he said.
Others say that the party lifestyle and a high cost of living stress families to the breaking point.
"This is a place of escape. A place of hedonistic abandon," said Dr. Fred Covan, a Key West therapist. "We have a condition here, we say people get Key Wasted. People come down here and do really, really stupid stuff."
Alcohol was named as a frequent culprit.
People in Nevada, which at 14 percent had the highest divorce rate of any state, gave similar reasons.
Frank Lin, a divorce attorney whose firm, Lin & Associates, uses the phone number 702-DIVORCE, said Nevada laws, a 24-hoursin city environment rich in temptation and other marriage hurdles probably combine to lead to more divorces.
"One of our clients was a bartender at the Palms, and he started seeing a cocktail waitress at the Playboy Club. When I go to work, I don't have cocktail waitresses in high heels showing cleavage," Lin said. "He does - that's sort of his daily environment."
But casino and nightclub employees aren't the only ones feeling marriage pressures, Lin said, because the rest of Las Vegas works a 24-hour cycle, too. Affairs aren't the only reason people get divorced here, he said.
"If both parties work 9-to-5 jobs, you see each other. But if one party works 9-to-5 and the other party works swing or graveyard, it's not an environment conduciveto a marriage," Lin said.
Nevada's laws make it easier to get divorced compared with other states. Couples need only live in the Silver State six weeks before their marriage can be dissolved, while other states require longer residency and a cooling-off period.
Regardless of the cause, having nearly 20 percent of the population divorced, as in Florida's Monroe County, is cause for concern, said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
"It's basically a social and environmental toxin," Wilcox said of divorce.
Information for this article was contributed by Scott Sonner of The Associated Press in Reno, Nev., Oskar Garcia in Las Vegas and Frank Bass in East Dover, Vt.; and Sonny Albarado of the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1, 12 on 09/25/2009