There may be a link between the cost of a couple’s wedding ring and the success of their marriage, a new study has claimed.
Researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, gathered data on 3,000 US adults who had been or were still married. The data suggested that that the higher the cost of the engagement ring, the shorter the resulting marriage.
Men who spent between $2,000 and $4,000 on their rings were 1.3 more likely to divorce than those who had spent less. However, the apparently protective effect of a cheaper ring disappeared when the husband-to-be spent less than $500 on his ring: such men were also more likely to divorce than those in the middle group.
The finding also applied to women – those who were given mid-price rings were less likely to divorce their husbands than those who received expensive ones.
The researchers theorized that spending more on a ring was likely to be linked to higher spending on the wedding as a whole, and that such couples experienced stress brought on by debt and financial concerns. Couples featured in the study who had spent more than $20,000 on their weddings were a significant 3.5 per cent more likely to divorce than couples who spent less than $10,000.
The average cost of a wedding in the United States is now $30,000, ABC 7 News reports.
Meanwhile, research published in August suggested that couples who have formal wedding ceremonies are more likely to be happy in their marriages.
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