Don't believe everything you read. While headlines exaggerate the death of marriage, rampant divorces and rising infertility rates, recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) tell another story. According to provisional figures released in August by the government agency, the fertility rate actually rose slightly between 1999 and 2000, the marriage rate stabilized (after 10 consecutive years of decline) and the divorce rate continued its 20-year downward trajectory.

That said, the biggest news in the report, "Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for January-December 2000," is overall stability. "When you look at the data over the long run, there's no massive decline in marriage, and the divorce rate has slowly moderated," says Jim Weed, deputy director of the division of vital statistics at the NCHS.

Indeed, the release of the last century's data provides an ideal opportunity to look back and put these figures in historical context, particularly for the contentious issues of marriage and divorce rates. While termed "preliminary," the report details the only information that the NCHS will be providing on marriage and divorce for the year 2000. (The full research program was cut back in 1996.) But when marriage and divorce rates are viewed over the long term, the only significant changes took place during the exceptional Baby Boom, otherwise, both rates have stayed relatively steady.

When viewed over a 60-year period, the marriage rate, for example, has remained fairly constant, with several long periods of slight ups and downs. The number of marriages per 1,000 people now hovers at 8.5, compared with a 60-year average of 10.1. The variations that did occur tended to come in times of depression and war, when fewer people got hitched because of economic or obvious logistical reasons.