Abstract: Using objective data from the recent 20 years，this paper made an effective study of the marital status in china; the result indicated that the marital stability is decreasing and the divorce rate is increasing:the proportion of divorced population from the married population is expanding constantly; the number of remarried people are growing; people of 35-49 years old are becoming the main age group of the high divorce rate; marital disputes are still intense and nearly half of the divorcing people tend to solve their controversies by judicial means. In addition，the regional feature of divorce reveals that divorce rate in rural areas is far below that of towns，and that of towns far below that of large cities; there are also conspicuous differences among provinces. The correlation analysis showed that the divorce rate was affected by multiple factors，among which the reduced dependency burden and the family size make a significant negative correlation. Moreover，the emergence of high divorce rate is closely related to the current transformation from a“collective society”to a more“individualized society”.

Key words: divorce rate, marriage, marital stability, divorced population, causes of divorce