The 10 Cities In South Dakota With The Highest Divorce Rates For 2021

If you're married, the thought of divorce has probably popped into your mind at least once.

Come on, admit it.

And if you're not married, let me tell you that there's gonna be a point at 2 a.m. when you have a crying baby and haven't slept in two months that it's gonna run through your head to run.

Far.

Away.

But, don't just take my word for it, take the word of the some 41,790 people living in South Dakota over fifteen years of age who are divorced. Or compare that to the 28,339,199 dAmericans who are already divorced in 2021.

A lot of people make the decision to run away - or simply split up - across the Mount Rushmore State.

Isn't the divorce rate in America close to 50%? Yes indeed. But that's not quite what we're measuring; we are looking at counts and percentages of people over 15 years old who are currently divorced.

You typically calculate that 50% statistic as percent of marriages.

But we are just going to focus on the actual number of divorced people today -- what better way to measure marital misery than the straight count of people in South Dakota it affects?

So now that we have you biting your nails, rethinking your world view, and pulling out your hair, let's take a look at the places in South Dakota with highest rates of divorcees.

Let's quickly recap before we dive into the methodology and a closer look at the top ten places in SD.

What is the city in South Dakota with the highest divorce rate? That would be Eagle Butte, with 15.0% of people over 15 years of age being divorced, per the most recent census data.

What is the overall South Dakota divorce rate? According to the 2015-2019 Community Survey, the overall divorce rate in South Dakota 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 South Dakota.

For more South Dakota reading, check out:

• Most Dangerous Cities In South Dakota
• Richest Cities In South Dakota
• Safest Places In South Dakota

Next 10 Cities

How We Determined The Places In South Dakota That Get Un-Hitched The Most

Since that this is the 58th category of rankings we are compiling for the site, we had a pretty good idea 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 2015-2019 American Community Survey specifically table S1201 -- Marital Status.

Pretty straight forward on that front -- we just had to extract the following column of data:

• Population 15 Years and Over -> Divorced

There's some kinda interesting/fun/sad data in there 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 67 places in South Dakota with a population of over 1,000.

We ranked each of these places by the percentage of divorcees over 15 years of age from highest to lowest. We crowned the divorce capital of South Dakota the place with the highest incidence of divorcees, Eagle Butte.

And if you're trying to avoid divorce, check out Vermillion, the city with the lowest divorce rate in South Dakota.

Getting Some Closure In South Dakota After Untying The Know

Besides just coming up with what we thought would be a great new blog/book title, "Untying the Knot In South Dakota: Life After Divorce", we now have a sense of what places in the Mount Rushmore State 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 South Dakota could be because of the age, education, and income distribution, as all of those things impact the rate of divorce.

And, in all honestly, that's probably for the best. It's much better to get out of a toxic relationship than stay it.

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

For more South Dakota reading, check out:

• Most Dangerous Cities In South Dakota
• Richest Cities In South Dakota
• Safest Places In South Dakota