1. I think that it is true that most older girls (or at least a significant number) who get married do marry guys who were married before (either divorced or widowed). I haven’t done statistics on it, but I am very familiar with a significant portion of that population, so (unlike APY), I am fairly confident about this.
2. It doesn’t necessarily follow that most divorced men end up marrying (and staying married to) single girls. Many of them may not get remarried at all, and a lot of them end up twice-divorced. Also, there may be more divorced men than single girls.
3. In any case, I highly doubt that that is a significant factor in the divorce rate. For one thing, I am pretty sure that most divorces are initiated by women, in which case the shidduch crisis should be a deterrent.
4. VERY IMPORTANT: There seems to be an unfair assumption that most divorces should not have taken place AND that people get divorced only because they don’t want to work on their marriages.
I know this has been argued about before in the CR, and we won’t reach a conclusion. I don’t think it is something that anyone here can really know, and I’m not sure that anyone can really know.
What I do know is that people should be “dan l’kaf zchus” and realize that most people who get divorced are not selfish people and they do have good reasons for getting divorced. Perhaps, some divorces could have been prevented, and perhaps some couldn’t have.
But either way, it is unfair and incorrect to assume that most people getting divorced are doing so because they are selfish and lazy.