The 10 Cities In New Mexico With The Highest Divorce Rates For 2023


The cities in New Mexico with the highest divorce rate are Belen and Tucumcari for 2023 based on Saturday Night Science.

Cities with highest divorce rate in New Mexico research summary. We analyzed New Mexico’s most recent Census data to determine the divorce rate for each city in New Mexico based on the percentage of currently divorced residents. Here are the results of our analysis:

  • The city with the highest divorce rate in New Mexico is Belen based on the most recent Census data.

  • Belen is 16.0% Divorced.

  • The city with the lowest divorce rate in New Mexico is Anthony.

  • Anthony is 1.0% Divorced.

  • New Mexico is 6.0% Divorced.


Table Of Contents: Top Ten | Methodology | Summary | Table


There are some 101,249 people living in New Mexico over fifteen years of age who are divorced. You can compare that to the 28,339,199 Americans who are currently divorced in 2023.

Many people decide to run away – or split up – across the Land of Enchantment.

Isn’t the divorce rate in America close to 50%? Yes indeed. But we’re measuring something else; we are looking at counts and percentages of people over 15 years old who are currently divorced. That 50% statistic is for the percentage of people who have ever been divorced.

For today’s analysis, the focus will be on the number of currently divorced people.

So now that we have you biting your nails, rethinking your worldview, and pulling out your hair, let’s look at the places in New Mexico with the highest rates of divorcees.

The 10 Cities In New Mexico With The Highest Divorce Rates

  1. Belen
  2. Tucumcari
  3. Las Vegas
  4. Bloomfield
  5. Bernalillo
  6. Raton
  7. Silver City
  8. Grants
  9. Taos
  10. Carlsbad

Let’s quickly recap before we dive into the Saturday Night Science behind the data.

What is the city in New Mexico with the highest divorce rate? That would be Belen, with 16.0% of people over 15 years of age being divorced, per the most recent census data.

What is the overall New Mexico divorce rate? According to the 2017-2021 Community Survey, the overall divorce rate in New Mexico is 6.0%, which compares to the US divorce rate of 10.9%.

Alrighty, on to how we calculated the places with the highest divorce rates in New Mexico.

For more New Mexico reading, check out:

The 10 Places With The Highest Divorce Rate In New Mexico For 2023

Belen, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 7,374
Divorce Rate: 16.0%
Divorcees: 943
Median Income: $36,954
More on Belen: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Tucumcari, NM

Source: Wikipedia User Wordbuilder | CC BY 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 5,221
Divorce Rate: 14.0%
Divorcees: 584
Median Income: $30,679
More on Tucumcari: Data | Real Estate

Las Vegas, NM

Source: Wikipedia User Asaavedra32 | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 13,247
Divorce Rate: 12.0%
Divorcees: 1,271
Median Income: $34,335
More on Las Vegas: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Bloomfield, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

6
/10

Population: 7,514
Divorce Rate: 10.0%
Divorcees: 601
Median Income: $47,284
More on Bloomfield: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Bernalillo, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 9,049
Divorce Rate: 10.0%
Divorcees: 723
Median Income: $54,850
More on Bernalillo: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Raton, NM

Source: Wikipedia User Billy Hathorn | CC BY-SA 3.0
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 6,082
Divorce Rate: 10.0%
Divorcees: 486
Median Income: $34,233
More on Raton: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Silver City, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

6
/10

Population: 9,694
Divorce Rate: 10.0%
Divorcees: 775
Median Income: $31,451
More on Silver City: Data | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Grants, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

5
/10

Population: 9,208
Divorce Rate: 8.0%
Divorcees: 589
Median Income: $44,782
More on Grants: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Taos, NM

Source: Wikipedia User Zeality | GFDL
Overall SnackAbility

4
/10

Population: 6,524
Divorce Rate: 7.0%
Divorcees: 365
Median Income: $37,083
More on Taos: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

Carlsbad, NM

Source: Public domain
Overall SnackAbility

7
/10

Population: 31,525
Divorce Rate: 7.0%
Divorcees: 1,765
Median Income: $70,745
More on Carlsbad: Data | Crime | Cost Of Living | Real Estate

How We Determined The Places In New Mexico That Get Un-Hitched The Most

Since this is the 58th category of rankings we are compiling for the site, we had a pretty good idea of where to find data on marriage and divorce in America — the U.S. Census Bureau. Because who likes tracking misery more than the U.S. government?

Specifically, we looked at the 2017-2021 American Community Survey table S1201 — Marital Status.

Pretty straightforward on that front — we just had to extract the following column of data:

  • Population 15 Years and Over -> Divorced

There are some interesting/fun/sad data like .1% of female Americans aged 15-19 are divorced, but 0% of males (That’s probably a rounding issue, but still).

But the national data is for another day. Today, the analysis focuses on the 34 places in New Mexico with a population of over 5,000.

We ranked each place by the percentage of divorcees over 15 years of age from highest to lowest. We crowned the divorce capital of New Mexico the place with the highest incidence of divorcees, Belen.

And if you’re trying to avoid divorce, check out Anthony, the city with the lowest divorce rate in New Mexico.

We updated this article for 2023 and this is our fifth time ranking the cities in New Mexico with the highest divorce rates.

Getting Some Closure In New Mexico After Untying The Know

Besides just coming up with what we thought would be a great new blog/book title, “Untying the Knot In New Mexico: Life After Divorce,” we now have a sense of what places in the Land of Enchantment don’t pay much attention to the whole “’til death do we part” phrase.

Try to keep in mind that the reason cities rank where they do in New Mexico could be because of the age, education, and income distribution, as all of those things impact the rate of divorce.

And that’s probably for the best. Getting out of a toxic relationship is much better than staying in it.

Just make sure you have your running shoes ready to go.

For more New Mexico reading, check out:

Detailed List Of The Cities With The Highest Divorce Rates In New Mexico

Rank City Divorce Rate
1 Belen, NM 16.0%
2 Tucumcari, NM 14.0%
3 Las Vegas, NM 12.0%
4 Bloomfield, NM 10.0%
5 Bernalillo, NM 10.0%
6 Raton, NM 10.0%
7 Silver City, NM 10.0%
8 Grants, NM 8.0%
9 Taos, NM 7.0%
10 Carlsbad, NM 7.0%
11 Los Lunas, NM 7.0%
12 Portales, NM 7.0%
13 Roswell, NM 7.0%
14 Gallup, NM 6.0%
15 Rio Rancho, NM 6.0%
16 Albuquerque, NM 6.0%
17 Deming, NM 6.0%
18 Farmington, NM 6.0%
19 Santa Fe, NM 6.0%
20 Corrales, NM 6.0%
21 Truth Or Consequences, NM 6.0%
22 Los Ranchos De Albuquerque, NM 5.0%
23 Clovis, NM 5.0%
24 Socorro, NM 5.0%
25 Alamogordo, NM 4.0%
26 Las Cruces, NM 4.0%
27 Edgewood, NM 4.0%
28 Aztec, NM 4.0%
29 Artesia, NM 4.0%
30 Lovington, NM 3.0%
31 Hobbs, NM 3.0%
32 Ruidoso, NM 2.0%
33 Sunland Park, NM 1.0%
34 Anthony, NM 1.0%