> 40% of the time

It's more subtle than that. If you dig into the data, you'll see it's closer to "100 marriages this year, 50 divorces -- omg half of marriages end in divorce!"

This is only true if there were zero existing, previous marriages before this year.

The more common trend now is that people just aren't getting married, likely in small part because of this mathematical+reporting malpractice. When you convince people something usually fails, they don't bother trying.