Shrinking divorce totals lift Japan's late-life share to a record 24.2%

Convert the shares back into couples and Japan's record gets smaller. A 24.2% share of 179,073 divorces is roughly 43,300 couples who had lived together 20 years or more ^[1][3][16]. The year before, a 23.8% share of 185,904 divorces was roughly 44,200 ^[17][18]. About 900 fewer long-marriage couples divorced, a fall of around 2%, while divorces overall fell 3.7% ^[19][20]. The long-married group shrank more slowly than the rest of the pool, so its share rose. Because the published shares are rounded to a tenth of a point, the true drop could be anywhere from about 700 to 1,100 couples ^[24].

Korea's share rose for a different reason, or rather, for the reason a reader of Japan's headline would assume: more older couples divorced. Divorces in which both spouses were 60 or older numbered 13,743 last year against 12,800 the year before ^[11][21]. The 943 extra couples came in a year when all divorces fell 3.3% ^[22]. Marriages of 30 years or more work out to roughly 15,600 Korean divorces ^[23]. The Ministry of Data and Statistics attributes the falling total to population decline and to earlier drops in marriages that feed into divorce figures with a lag ^[10].

In Japan's courts the long-married group is a little larger. Couples married 20 years or more were 26.4% of court-handled divorce cases last year ^[5], 2.2 points above their share of all divorces ^[25], although the judicial and vital statistics come from separate series. The Mainichi Shimbun linked the rising share mainly to wider use of social media and to shifting views of marriage ^[7].

The statistics do not include the value of property or pensions divided, so the case for more late-life asset splits landing on advisers' desks rests on counts of couples. Those counts allow more than one reading. Japan's share could keep setting records on a falling count for as long as the overall total shrinks faster. Korea's increase could come from a larger population over 60, with no change in how often older couples split; for an adviser that changes the explanation and leaves the caseload the same. And the Korean run is short: the over-60 share was 13.4% in 2022 and 13.0% in 2023 before rising to 14.0% and then 15.6% ^[12].

I think the thesis of more late-life splits holds for Korea in plain numbers. For Japan it holds only as a proportion, with older clients a bigger slice of a smaller market. The view on Japan is wrong if next year's count of 20-plus-year divorces rises along with its share.