London: New official statistics from the UK offer a nuance on Leo Tolstoy’s famous observation.
Happy families may all be alike, but the country’s unhappy families also have something in common: The cost-of-living crisis.
The share of adults declaring themselves to be either fairly or extremely unhappy with their relationship is at the highest since 2014, but the divorce rate is at its lowest level in more than 50 years.
That’s according to household survey data and separate divorce statistics released by the Office for National Statistics.
Those trends coincided with the worst bout of double-digit inflation in decades, reducing household incomes and driving up the cost of everything from energy bills to groceries and rent.
Soaring mortgage rates imposed by the Bank of England to curtail price increases pushed up the cost of owning and renting homes.
Effectively, that drove up the price of dissolving long-term partnerships.
“Some people have postponed divorcing or separating until the economy is better,” said Joanna Newton, a partner at Stowe Family Law.
“What one income may have covered previously — bills, childcare and other living expenses, that’s become increasingly stretched and increasingly more unaffordable.”
Decline in happiness
The figures also support a broader decline in happiness levels across the UK.
The number of Britons reporting high anxiety and low life satisfaction was above pre-Covid levels in the first quarter of 2024, according to household survey data published by the ONS on Thursday.
The report showed the share of people unhappy with their relationship hit 6 per cent in 2022, the most since 2014.
Divorces in England and Wales are at their lowest level since 1971, according to separate figures published earlier this year. The number of divorces fell 30 per cent on the year to 80,057 in 2022.
That’s despite a landmark shakeup of divorce laws in 2020 aimed at improving the separation process by stopping one partner from contesting a divorce requested by their spouse. The reform also introduced so-called “no-fault” divorces, which no longer require one of the spouses to provide evidence of unreasonable behavior on the part of their partner.
The economic trends overwhelmed that impact. And while real household incomes are growing again after inflation returned to the 2 per cent target in the last two months, mortgage rates remain more than double the average in the years leading up to the pandemic, and the rental market is still red-hot.
One of key reasons
“I don’t think mortgage costs and interest rates have come down enough for people to feel comfortable and confident to push the button,” Newton said. “It’s a bit of ‘watch this space’.”
The housing market was one of the key reasons why unhappy couples put off separation. The increase in mortgage costs — together with the spike in rental prices due to supply shortages, made moving out on their own out of reach for many. And while the housing market avoided a crash last year, some couples postponed putting their house on the market out of fear of selling at a loss.
“Selling your house at the best possible time means more money to be split between the parties and purchase new accommodation,” Newton said.
More than 30 per cent of the 500 people surveyed by Stowe Family Law were sticking with their partners because they wouldn’t afford to leave alone, according to a report last year.
The cost-of-living crisis was also one of the reasons why many relationships turned sour in recent years. About half of the respondents of the Stowe Family Law report said they hadn’t experienced any financial tensions before January 2022.
Most said the cost-of-living crisis has affected their relationship. Respondents cited issues around rising utility and food bills, and worries they wouldn’t be able to maintain their current lifestyle, the report also said.
In other words, financial strain is a common element in many unhappy relationships — a twist on Tolstoy’s conclusion in Anna Karenina that, “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
