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Today's Financial Times reports that billionaires have a lower divorce rate than you might think. We investigate...
You'd expect that having a huge fortune and a business empire would see people churning through relationships. Because they can.
Today's Financial Times reports that billionaires have a lower divorce rate than you might think - "The mystery of billionaires' long marriages'. That sounded surprising to we investigated, looking at the top 50 people in the Forbes billionaires list.
The divorce rate in the general population is about 42%, according to ONS figures.
Of the Forbes top 50, 18 billionaires had divorced. This gives us 36% divorce rate - not too far from the general population.
But here are two big differences from the general population (aside, obviously, from having much more money):
1. Some of the hyper-wealthy are also hyper-reclusive
Nobody knows much about their private lives. Notably, the Albrecht family, who founded Aldi and the Schwarz family, who own Lidl, are extremely private people. It's no surprise why: In 1971, Aldi heir Theo Albrecht Jr. was kidnapped and held to ransom for over a fortnight.
There aren't even photographs of some of the people on that list. They value their privacy and they have the money and power to guarantee it.
2. Very successful people are WEIRD
That's not just our view: Justine Musk, ex-wife of tech billionaire Elon, recently turned up on web forum Qora to give her views on the most successful entrepreneurs.
"Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things," she observes. "These people tend to be freaks and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way."
Extremely successful people "...are unconventional, and one reason they become the entrepreneurs they become is because they can't or don't or won't fit into the structures and routines of corporate life. They are dyslexic, they are autistic, they have ADD, they are square pegs in round holes, they piss people off, get into arguments, rock the boat, laugh in the face of paperwork."
They also have to deal with "...Family drama, issues with the Significant Other you rarely see, dark nights of the soul, people who bore and annoy you, little sleep, less sleep than that."
In short, they are HARD GOING
On that basis you'd expect them to have a much higher divorce rate than the average person - but it's actually slightly LOWER. Maybe part of being successful is also finding someone who'll put up with your nonsense.
That or the financial penalties that come from divorce push the billionaires who do divorce out of the top 50 list
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