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To find a reason to stay married, take the advice from US researchers: divorce is bad for the environment.
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Irked spouses looking for a reason to stay married were offered a novel rationale by US researchers on Monday: divorce is bad for the environment.
The global trend toward higher divorce rates has created more households with fewer people, scientists at Michigan State University reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
More households means more houses, fuel and water are needed for them, the researchers wrote.
"Globally, the number of households is increasing much faster than the number of people," said co-author "Jack" Liu in a telephone interview.
"Even in regions with declining population, we see substantial increase in the number of households. Divorce is the main reason for reducing the number of people in a household," he said.
The average divorced person's household is about 40 to 50 percent smaller than the average married person's household, Liu said. But whether there are three or six people in a house, the amount of fuel needed to heat them is about the same.
Divorce tosses out any economies of scale, the researchers found.
In the United States, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 2.850 trillion litres of water in 2005 that could have been saved if households had stayed the same size as when they were married.
In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households.
The number of divorced households in those countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000. The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households.
"If you really want to get divorced, you know that two people cannot stay together, you don't want to stay together forever, then maybe you remarry with somebody else, or live together with somebody else you like," Liu said.
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(Agencies)
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如果“怨偶”們想找個不離婚的理由，可以聽聽美國研究人員于本周一提出的新理論：離婚危害環境！
密歇根州立大學的科學家們在《國家科學院院刊》上發表研究報告稱，全球離婚率日益上升導致家庭數量增多，家庭成員減少。
研究人員稱，家庭增多意味著需要更多的住房、燃料和供水。
研究報告撰寫人之一Jack Liu在接受電話采訪時說：“從全球范圍來看，家庭數量的增長比人口增長快得多。”
他說：“即使在人口負增長地區，家庭數量的增長也相當可觀。離婚是造成家庭成員減少的主要原因。”
Jack Liu說：“一般來說，單身離婚家庭的“規?！币日＜彝バ〖s40%至50%。但無論一家有三口人還是有六口人，供暖所需的燃料是一樣多的?！?/font>
研究人員發現，離婚會破壞“規模經濟”。
2005年，美國的離婚家庭共用電730億千瓦時，用水28.5億立方米(1升=0.001立方米)。如果家庭規模保持不變，跟這些人離婚之前一樣，那么這些被消耗的水電就可以節省下來。
從1998年到2002年，在美國以及巴西、哥斯達黎加、厄瓜多爾、希臘、墨西哥和南非等其它11個國家，如果單身離婚家庭重新組合后達到與正常家庭相同的規模，那么家庭數量可以減少740萬個。
2000年前后，這些國家的離婚家庭數量在4萬（哥斯達黎加）和1600萬（美國）之間不等。離婚家庭的人均房間數比正常家庭多33%至95%。
Jack Liu說：“如果你確實想離婚，覺得兩個人無法在一起生活了或者不想一輩子呆在一起，那么你可以考慮再婚，或與你喜歡的人同居?！?/font>
（英語點津姍姍編輯）
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