Millennials responsible for America's shrinking divorce rate

Holding Hands. (Bryngelzon)

Millennials are shirking yet another American tradition: divorce.

Thanks to younger couples getting married later, presumably when they’re more mature, the US divorce rate dropped by 18 percent between 2008 and 2016, a new study by the University of Maryland has found.

After crunching data from the US Census Bureau, researcher and professor Philip Cohen discovered that a 35-year-old millennial today is more likely to hit his or her fifth wedding anniversary than a 35-year-old Gen Xer was in 2008.

“When you’re comparing apples to apples during this period, people [today] are less likely to get divorced,” Cohen said.

Cohen says millennial marriages are more stable because their lives are in greater order when they tie the knot. “We see people getting married at older ages, people getting married with college degrees already,” Cohen says. “They are less likely to be already divorced or have children when they get married, both of which are risk factors for divorce.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post.