Michigan’s divorce rate is 2.2 per 1,000 residents, but in Alpena 21.6% of adults are divorced

Imagine it is late, the house is quiet, and you type “Michigan divorce rate” into your phone. Maybe you are writing a paper. Maybe you are wondering, privately, about your own marriage and want to know whether you are as alone as you feel. Either way, you deserve a clear answer and not a scary headline. Here it is, along with what the number does and does not mean.

Michigan’s annual divorce rate is 2.2 per 1,000, and 11.4% of adults are divorced

There are two different “divorce numbers,” and most confusion comes from mixing them up.

• The annual divorce rate counts divorces granted in a year per 1,000 residents. CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports a provisional Michigan rate of 2.2 per 1,000 in 2024, unchanged from 2023 and down from 3.9 in 2000 and 4.3 in 1990. The national figure for 2024 was 2.3 per 1,000 (among the states that report).
• The share of adults currently divorced is a stock: everyone age 15 and older whose most recent marriage ended in divorce and who has not remarried. Statewide that is 11.4% in the 2020-2024 American Community Survey (ACS).

The annual rate is the better answer to “how often do Michigan marriages end each year?” The divorced share is the better answer to “how many of my neighbors are divorced right now?” City-level annual rates are not published, so the rest of this page uses the divorced share to compare communities.

Which Michigan cities have the highest share of divorced adults?

Across the 101 Michigan places with at least 10,000 residents, the divorced share ranges from 21.6% in Alpena to 2.9% in East Lansing. Coldwater (21.3%) is a close second, followed by Grand Haven (18.7%), Niles and Cadillac (18.2% each), Muskegon and Comstock Park (17.8% each).

A pattern runs through the top of the list: many are small regional cities and county seats, not big metros. Alpena, Coldwater, Cadillac, Niles and Escanaba all have populations between roughly 10,000 and 14,000. Several are older than the state, too. Michigan’s median age is 40.2, while Alpena’s is 46.0 and Grand Haven’s is 46.8. Age matters because the divorced share builds up over a lifetime. A 50-year-old has had decades in which a divorce could happen, while a 22-year-old usually has not married yet.

That is also why Grand Haven, where 47.2% of adults are married (close to the state’s 47.6%), can rank third for divorce. A place can have plenty of married people and plenty of divorced people at the same time if its population skews older and fewer adults have never married.

Why the lowest divorced shares are in college towns and highly married suburbs

The bottom of the list has two very different kinds of places. College towns such as East Lansing (2.9%), Allendale (4.8%) and Ann Arbor (5.8%) have median ages under 28. Most adults there have never married, so very few can be divorced.

The other group is suburbs where most adults are married: Forest Hills (4.5%), Grosse Pointe Park (4.7%), Jenison and Troy (6.4% each) and East Grand Rapids (6.6%). Hamtramck (3.8%) also sits near the bottom, alongside a young median age of 26.5 and a 53.1% married share. A low divorced share can therefore mean “young,” “married” or both, and it is not a measure of how happy anyone’s marriage is.

The large cities fall in the middle. Detroit is at 11.7%, Grand Rapids 11.0%, Lansing 13.3%, Warren 12.2% and Sterling Heights 8.6%. In all, 58 of the 101 places are above the statewide 11.4%.

Highest and lowest divorced shares, Michigan places over 10,000

Methodology: two sources, two different measures

Annual rates. The statewide and national divorce rates come from the CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System table “Divorce rates by State: 1990, 1995, and 2000-2024.” Rates are based on provisional counts of divorces by state of occurrence, per 1,000 total population, and include annulments. The national 2024 rate excludes California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota and New Mexico, which do not report.

City shares. Place figures come from the Census Bureau’s ACS 2024 5-year estimates (2020-2024), table B12001, pulled through the Census Reporter API for all 101 Michigan places of 10,000 or more people. The divorced share is people 15 and older who report being divorced, divided by everyone 15 and older. Separated people are counted separately and are not included. Median age is from table B01002. The count of 58 places above 11.4% is a direct tally of the table.

Limitations to keep in mind

• A divorced share falls when divorced people remarry, so it understates how many adults have ever divorced.
• People move. Someone who divorced in Detroit and later moved to Alpena is counted in Alpena.
• ACS figures are survey estimates with margins of error, which are wider for small cities. Differences of a point or two may not be meaningful.
• CDC rates are provisional, are counted where the divorce was granted, and some states report filings or legal separations for some counties.

What this means for couples and families

A city’s divorced share tells you about its age and history. It cannot tell you anything about your own marriage. Living in a place near the top of this list does not make divorce more likely for you, and living near the bottom does not protect anyone.

If you are the person typing this search late at night, you are not the only one wondering. Some people find it helps to slow the decision down. Our guide to thinking about divorce walks through that uncertainty, and discernment counseling is one structured approach for couples where one partner is leaning out. If you are curious what the evidence says about repair, see whether couples therapy works. Iryna Morhunova-Sutton, LLMFT, works with individuals and couples online, anywhere in Michigan. For the county view, see divorce across Michigan’s 83 counties.

Update schedule

We update the city figures each December when the Census Bureau publishes a new ACS 5-year release, and the annual rate when CDC/NCHS posts its next state table. Both updates are noted at the top of the page.