To find a reason to stay married, take the advice from US researchers: divorce is bad for the environment.
 
Irked spouses¹ 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 Proceedings² 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 "Jack³" 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.

如果“怨偶”们想找个不离婚的理由，可以听听美国研究人员于本周一提出的新理论：离婚危害环境！

密歇根州立大学的科学家们在《国家科学院院刊》上发表研究报告称，全球离婚率日益上升导致家庭数量增多，家庭成员减少。

研究人员称，家庭增多意味着需要更多的住房、燃料和供水。

研究报告撰写人之一Jack Liu在接受电话采访时说：“从全球范围来看，家庭数量的增长比人口增长快得多。”

他说：“即使在人口负增长地区，家庭数量的增长也相当可观。离婚是造成家庭成员减少的主要原因。”

Jack Liu说：“一般来说，单身离婚家庭的“规模”要比正常家庭小约40%至50%。但无论一家有三口人还是有六口人，供暖所需的燃料是一样多的。”

研究人员发现，离婚会破坏“规模经济”。

2005年，美国的离婚家庭共用电730亿千瓦时，用水28.5亿立方米(1升=0.001立方米)。如果家庭规模保持不变，跟这些人离婚之前一样，那么这些被消耗的水电就可以节省下来。

从1998年到2002年，在美国以及巴西、哥斯达黎加、厄瓜多尔、希腊、墨西哥和南非等其它11个国家，如果单身离婚家庭重新组合后达到与正常家庭相同的规模，那么家庭数量可以减少740万个。

2000年前后，这些国家的离婚家庭数量在4万（哥斯达黎加）和1600万（美国）之间不等。离婚家庭的人均房间数比正常家庭多33%至95%。

Jack Liu说：“如果你确实想离婚，觉得两个人无法在一起生活了或者不想一辈子呆在一起，那么你可以考虑再婚，或与你喜欢的人同居。”

Vocabulary:

irked:very angry（十分生气）

toss out:丢弃；扔掉