But engineers strike a good balance of time at home and financial compensation. If you're making much more than a decent engineer, you're probably a senior exec, lawyer, or business owner with not enough time for the wife. Don't have any data to back this up, but just my suspicion.

If you're making much less than an engineer, you may run into money problems which is a leading cause of divorce.

A bartender spends a good chunk of their time socializing with alternatives to their spouse. They're bound to meet someone else eventually.

An engineer is typically cooped up in an office with a bunch of other engineers. Not much in the way of alternate lovers...

HIGH:

- Dancers and choreographers (43.1 percent)

- bartenders (38.4 percent)

- massage therapists (38.2 percent)

- Also in the top 10 were casino workers, telephone operators, nurses and home health aides.

LOW:

- optometrists (4 percent)

- clergy (5.6 percent)

- podiatrists (6.8 percent)

- Three types of engineers -- agricultural, sales and nuclear engineers -- were represented among the 10 occupations with the lowest divorce rates

And Mathematicians (#9).

Complete list is here: http://hanson.gmu.edu/temp/DivorcebyJob.xls

2. "Why are bartenders this way and engineers that way? Unfortunately we just don't know," - eh, if you are a bartender your probably are meeting good looking people daily. The temptation might be just too great to resist. As an engineer, you are much more less likely to meet good look people during your work, or even just people of the other sex, period.

The bartender might also be likely to be drinking too much, which could be hard on a marriage.

And I'm saying that from the perspective of an engineering student just waiting to finish. Partly cause school is insane, and partly so I can rejoin the real world where women actually out number men.

With regards to the real world, it depends on where you live. From: http://www.siliconvalleybachelor.com/2009/02/man-jose-its-of...

The Census Bureau recently released it's numbers showing that there are 117 men for every 100 women in San Jose amongst the ages of 20 to 44 years old.

Notice these key sentences in the article. "If a person had divorced and remarried by the time of the Census, they would be counted as married. So it could be the case that people in some occupations are just quicker to jump into the next marriage than others. "

The numbers don't suggest that engineers divorce at a lower rate than others. They suggest that engineers are less likely to be in a divorced state (but this could either be due to less engineers divorcing or more engineers remarrying quickly).

Or that engineers are logical? As my father-in-law once said (when he was a guest family lawyer on a reality TV show.) "If you are wondering how much it costs to get divorced, just ask me if I'm still married." (Note: that was in jest, but his wife still gave him a hard time about it.) Divorce sucks all around. Figuring out the problem and trying to fix it is a much better solution that divorce.

Mathematicians are #9.

There's an Excel file halfway into the article. I'd copy the exact figures on here but it's getting Websense'd :(