Pricey Engagement Rings Linked To Higher Divorce Rates

If you are planning on getting engaged, you might want to think twice before buying that huge, extravagant and lavish rock that caught your eye, as it appears that costly engagement rings correlate to higher divorce rates in the US.

The researchers at Emory University conducted a comprehensive study on this matter last month and came about some interesting data. Long story short – if you’re spending major dough on your engagement ring, you may be in the wrong relationship.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon, the two professors behind the research, analyzed data from 3,000 heterosexual couples and tried to “evaluate the association between wedding spending and marriage duration.”

What they found was that the length of marriage among subjects was indeed related to the cash spent on their weddings and engagement rings.

This is how Kelly Faircloth of Jezebel presented the stats:

“Women whose engagement rings cost over $20,000 are 3.5 more likely to get divorced than those in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Men who spent $2,000 to $4,000 on their wife’s ring got divorced 1.5 times more than those who dropped between $500 and $2,000.”

More Correlation Than Causation

Like any other study of this kind, we should take these stats with a grain of salt. As folks over at Big Think said, we must note that this link between marriage duration and wedding cost are much more “correlation” than “causation”, and that there are many a happily married couples who spent a small fortune on their nuptials.

Also, there a plenty of those who spent only about $500 on an engagement ring, but now wish they had kept the receipt.