The Reality Behind Divorces Within the Military

The short version is or (BLUF) More money problems, more divorce. Enlisted have more money problems

One of the leading causes of divorce is financial problems. I think the numbers are higher for enlisted because they have more financial problems. Several factors contribute to this, but I believe some of the variables for the problems are:
1) financial education -officers tend to be versed in the area, but certainly not always
2) budgeting/ financial planning
3) bad decision-making (buying things you can't afford)
4) disparity in enlisted/officer pay. (officers usually make more than enlisted) meaning, they can maintain a higher quality of life if they chose. Enlisted tend to get in trouble trying to live like a colonel on a private's salary
5)Money shortage- overspending leads to excessive bills and concern about affording necessities (creates stress and insecurities) this is when you really get in marriage trouble
6) uncommon vision in the household- arguing over who spent what/why instead of working together

While the information you provide is interesting since your graphic does not depict the total percentage nor do you provide the civilian statistics to compare the data to, it is difficult to answer the question as posed. In fact your statistics may bias any answer solicited since the percentage you show as married may have had a divorce in the past and remarried.
DATA required:
Of the total number of US military personnel who have been married at least once what percentage have divorced at least once?
_____________
According to the APA approximately 40-50% of American marriages end in divorce (http://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/). Again this is a total percentage and does not take into account 2nd, 3rd etc marriages. The US active duty military is less than 2% of the total national population. I would submit that the military total divorce percentage reflects fairly closely the national average percentage of around 50%.

I have looked for this statistic in the past and discovered that most Services report percentage of divorces by year. The DOD can report that divorce rates are continuing on a downward trend; for example the "Military Times" in a Dec 2013 article reported that in 2011 the divorce rate among military women was 8% and in 2013 had dropped to 7.2%. So only about 7/100 military women got a divorce in 2013 as compared to the 8/100 in 2011. This is meaningless data without the civilian comparison to the total divorce rate among American women overall for those years, without knowledge of how many total women this statistic represents, and does not capture re-marriage and overall national percentage rate.
"How the military divorce rates compares with that of civilians also is problematic because the civilian world does not track data like DoD and the military population is demographically very different than the public at large." (Tilghman, 2013, Military Times)
source:
(http://archive.militarytimes.com/article/20131219/NEWS/312190026/Military-divorce-rate-ticks-downward)

I am surprised by the low numbers overall, but not that surprised by the differences between enlisted and commissioned. It seemed a lot higher when I was on active duty. As one who was divorced during my first deployment in the wayback, and now a pastor who has studied relationships and counseled many couples, the reasons are multiple. First, enlisted tend to get married younger (i.e., more immature-my situation), lack the finances, lack the stability, etc. that it takes to make a marriage work. Couple that with deployments early in the marriage, and problems get magnified. For a 21 year old E-3 and a 20 year old wife, that is stressful. It's easier to walk away from a one year marriage when you haven't seen each other in six months. Since the majority of officers are in the mid-twenties or later when they reach active duty and have a longer time period of active duty before first deployment due to longer OCS, longer MOS training, etc., those few short years of life are a lifetime's worth of experience when it comes to marriage. Add a better financial situation, and the odds improve. I would be interested in a breakdown of E-5 and above compared to officer. I think the stats might be a bit closer.

I'll throw one other less obvious but I think a partial contributor to the stats: if you study the family backgrounds of both groups, I am willing to bet that a significant percentage of the officers' parents remained married at least through their childhood. why does that matter? Because single and divorced parents lack the financial resources that allow a kid to go to college, and single parents as a group have a lower education level. The result is that two equally educated kids have different opportunities based on the home they grow up in. If both are interested in the military, the one with the greater chance of going to college first is of course the one from the family with better resources. and more likely to receive a commission when entering. That same family stability that allows for college also sets an example of long term relationships that those of us who came from broken homes rarely saw. Kids of two parent households fare better in all aspects of life: college, successful marriage, etc. Two parent households have a higher average household income by a significant margin.