The Associated Press/Salon.com reports that new data show that the divorce rate in the U.S. is falling and is at its lowest point since 1970, due to several different factors:

Researchers have documented what they call “the divorce divide,” contending that divorce rates are indeed falling substantively among college-educated couples but not among less-affluent, less-educated couples. “Families with two earners with good jobs have seen an improvement in their standard of living, which leads to less tension at home and lower probability of divorce,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University. . . .

What’s fueling that decline? According to 20 scholars, marriage-promotion experts and divorce lawyers consulted by The Associated Press, a combination of things. The number of couples who live together without marrying has increased tenfold since 1960; the marriage rate has dropped by nearly 30 percent in past 25 years; and Americans are waiting about five years longer to marry than they did in 1970. . . .

The per capita divorce rate is different from another method of calculation -- the percentage of marriages that will eventually end in divorce or separation. Many experts discount the popular notion that one of two U.S. marriages end in divorce, and suggest the breakup rate, which is hard to calculate, has stabilized in recent years at between 40 percent and 45 percent.

As I’ve posted about earlier, this decline in the divorce rate has been apparent for some time now. To summarize, the causes are more cohabitation among couples leading to fewer marriages in general, people waiting longer to marry, and people who do marry tend to be more educated and more affluent and therefore more economically stable.

Ultimately, people who have been making doomsday predictions about the end of the “traditional” family are right about one thing -- that families come in all different varieties these days, not just the traditional form of a heterosexual husband and wife and their children. But such critics seem to be a little too pessimistic when they argue that such changes are detrimental to American society.

Although we need to look at more measures than the falling divorce rate before making any definitive conclusions, my impression is that such changes in the structure of contemporary American families mean that yes things are different, but not necessarily that things are worse. In many respects, they’re better.