Recently I read an interview in the U.S. News and Daily Report with Tim Harford, author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World. His book explores the idea that there are many rational choices that lie behind seemingly irrational events, and when I heard he had referred to divorce as "underrated", I couldn't wait to find out how he justified that one.

But as seems to be the norm lately, I was wrong again. Harman pointed out one benefit of divorce that I had not considered — since divorce has become easier to come by, Harman claims, there has been a decline in the rate of domestic violence and female suicide.

This illustrated two important concepts to me. The first was how difficult divorce must have been for women of previous generations. The statement "easier divorce equals fewer female suicides" makes sense. But that means that in the past, women would rather commit suicide than stay married or get divorced. And that, my friends, is really saying something.

The other concept that jumped out at me is that incidents of domestic violence have decreased since divorce has become easier to obtain. Again, this is a statement that makes sense on its own, but think of the deeper implication. How many times have we (unfortunately) heard someone lament "I couldn't help myself, she just made me so angry!"? Well, apparently you could help yourself. Once the penalty for abuse was increased (women could leave their husbands), the abuse decreased as husbands began to fear their wives would actually leave them.

I guess that whole axiom about clouds and silver linings has something to it after all.

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