Do Civil society participation and Divorce rate (UN) go together across countries?

Across 78 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.20, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.01.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 2013-2024, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.122 (73 countries, 791 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.066.

Does Civil society participation cause Divorce rate (UN)?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Civil society participation vs. Divorce rate (UN)

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 78 countries, Civil society participation and Divorce rate (UN) rise and fall together at r = -0.20 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.21, q = 0.040, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.19 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of divorce rate (un), 1.34 to 1.99 divorces per 1,000 people, civil society participation is worse by 0.0427 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.0401 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.199p = 0.081 · 78 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.214p = 0.061 · likely range [-0.42, +0.01]

p, allowing for regions0.110standard error 0.110 · 6 regions

Check for luck (q)0.040across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Civil society participation · index (0-1)link with income +0.29 · independent

Divorce rate (UN) · divorces per 1,000 peoplelink with income +0.07 · independent

Neither of these is closely tied to national income, so adjusting for income is a real test here, not a formality.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.199	0.081	78
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.011	0.921	78
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.214	0.061	78
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.008	0.943	78

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 78 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.016 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.291 (without QAT) to -0.105 (without RUS). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: RUS (+0.109).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.

leave-one-out range spans 0.19 in r
correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed
sign flips once outliers are trimmed
direction is not consistent across regions

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
Europe & Central Asia	47	-0.29
Latin America & Caribbean	12	+0.10

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	26	-0.17
Middle third	26	-0.56
Richest third	26	+0.17

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	52	-0.32
Muslims	15	-0.26

By last european coloniser

	n	r
Never a European colony	12	-0.31
United Kingdom	17	+0.09

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.030 after dropping 6 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 12years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.122, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose civil society participation moved did not tend to see their divorce rate (un) move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.214for comparison

Within countries-0.085each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.122q = 0.165 · 73 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.066q = 0.346

Read with care.

Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

791 country-years (one country in one year), 73 countries, 2013–2024, about 11 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 10% for Civil society participation, 4% for Divorce rate (UN). The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.122. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data

	index (0-1)	divorces per 1,000 people	Years
Germany DEU	0.979	1.55	2025, 2024
Norway NOR	0.973	1.53	2025, 2024
Denmark DNK	0.971	2.16	2025, 2024
Switzerland CHE	0.971	1.74	2025, 2023
Luxembourg LUX	0.954	1.78	2025, 2024
Ireland IRL	0.954	0.637	2025, 2020
Finland FIN	0.948	2.11	2025, 2024
Belgium BEL	0.947	1.7	2025, 2023
Sweden SWE	0.939	2.05	2025, 2024
Canada CAN	0.938	1.13	2025, 2020
Australia AUS	0.928	1.83	2025, 2023
Trinidad and Tobago TTO	0.907	2.02	2025, 2016
Slovenia SVN	0.907	0.972	2025, 2024
Barbados BRB	0.896	1.53	2025, 2022
Latvia LVA	0.892	2.85	2025, 2024

Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project
United Nations Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, 2017 to 2024 editions: tables of marriages and crude marriage rates, and of divorces and crude divorce rates, by urban/rural residence.

Sources

Civil society participation

Civil society participation index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

How far governments consult civic groups, and how widely people take part in them. A part of the participatory democracy index.

Divorce rate (UN)

Crude divorce rate, countries with complete registration

United Nations Statistics Division · UNdata terms of use · updated annual (each edition covers the latest five years)

Divorces granted in the year per 1,000 people, from the same UN Demographic Yearbook collection and with the same rule: only countries whose register the UN rates as at least 90% complete. It is a crude rate, counted against everyone, not just married people. So a country where few people marry can have few divorces without its marriages lasting any longer. Countries where divorce is rare by law or custom and countries where it is simply not recorded can look alike. The United States is left out: its divorce counts miss six states, but the rate is worked out over the whole population. No "better" direction is set.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2013–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 6 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Civil society participation and Divorce rate (UN)

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Civil society participation changes Divorce rate (UN), or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.