Olivia Black (olivia.leishman7@gmail.com); Kathryn Grendell (kjbraham@byu.edu); (Kimalie Nye (kimalie.nye@gmail.com); Samantha Bailey (snbailey135@gmail.com)

The economic recession between 2008-2010 impacted many facets of life across the globe. For instance, marriage rates declined slightly while suicide rates rose as a result of the economic recession. We predicted that because of this change, during the recession in several Western countries, divorce and suicide rates would both increase. After the Great Recession, we predicted that marriage and divorce rates would be correlated among several Western countries. Using data from the Global Families Research Initiative at Brigham Young University, collated from different data sources such as the United Nations, the individual country’s department of statistics, and through correspondence with international statistics bureaus, our results suggest that while divorce and suicide had a significant correlation between the years 2008-2019, marriage and divorce only were significantly correlated between 2013-2019. Marriage and suicide had no correlation for any of the years between 2008-2019. These findings suggest that as divorce rates rose, marriage rates fell during the few years during and after the recession. It was not until 2013 that marriage and divorce began to stabilize together. Additionally, suicide and divorce appeared to rise in conjunction with one another and then fall and stabilize, and this is a pattern that has continued to present itself over the last decade.