This is the first in a series of four articles examining four critical family formation trends, marriage, children living with married parents, divorce, and cohabitation.
As we think about the health of family in the United States, we must understand the nature of family formation trends. What decisions are Americans making about their intimate lives, living situations and the kinds of relationships they are choosing to develop?
Marriage is the mortar that holds a healthy, thriving, growing community together. That is a fundamental sociological truth. When marriage declines, family declines. When family declines, children, women, men and society itself suffers.
So, we must ask “Is marriage growing or declining in America today?” The stats are clear and it is not an encouraging story. Following is an offering of some of the best and most recent academic and government sources tracking marriage formation trends using various measures.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports (May 2024) that married-couple households made up 47% of all U.S. households in 2022, down from 71% in 1970.
The National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University notes the U.S. marriage rate has declined 54% from 1900 to today. That rate peaked in 1920 at 92.3, almost triple the 2022 rate.
This is an extremely disturbing cultural indicator.
University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox, in his important 2024 book Get Married: Why Americans Should Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization, asserts marriage rates in America have hit an all-time low.
Specifically, he explains,
The marriage rate has fallen about 65 percent in the last half century, from a recent peak of almost eighty-six marriages per one thousand unmarried people in 1970. …Declines in marriage and increases in divorce mean that slightly less than one in two adults are currently married, down from about 75 percent in 1960.
This chart from his book demonstrates the recent historical decline.
Pew Research Center reports (2023) a dramatic 4-fold increase since 1980 in never married adults in the U.S., a record high.
As of 2021, 25% of 40-year-old in the United States have never married. This was a significant increase from six percent in 1980.
While many of these unmarried 40-year-olds are living with a romantic partner, most are not. In 2022, 22% of never-married adults ages 40 to 44 were cohabiting.
The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) reports the same thing, showing sustained declines in “currently married adults” and a steady rise in “never married adults” while the divorce rate has declined, as we will examine this series’ second report.
IFS explains,
Marriages today are more stable, thanks to the steady decline of divorce rates since the 1980s. At the same time, however, a declining share of Americans marry. In 2018, a record 35% of Americans ages 25 to 50, or 39 million, had never been married. The share was only 9% in 1970.
Marriage Rates By Income
It is highly important to note that the decline in marriage rates is found most dramatically among lower income Americans, thus cutting them off from one of the most potent wealth building institutions known to humanity: Marriage. The decline is far less dramatic, nearly by half, among higher income citizens.
In Get Married, Professor Wilcox explains the dramatic wealth-creating accumulating power of marriage:
In 2020, married mothers age eighteen to fifty-five had a median family income of $108,000, compared to $41,000 for childless single women of the same ages. … And as these married mothers head into retirement in their fifties, they’ve accumulated $322,000 in median assets, compared to $100,000 for their single, childless peers.
Marriage By Level of Education
Marriage rates have also diverged dramatically relative to education.
Bowling Green State University data shows marriage rates between different educated groups were generally the same in 1920. Today, college educated women are more than twice as likely to be married as their high school educated peers.
This fact drives a further wedge between the haves and have-nots seeking to realize the American Dream for their own lives as marriage is a powerful driver in boosting one’s socio-economic status.
The National Marriage Project (University of Virginia) in their most recent State of Our Unions report explains the overall historic picture of marriage’s rise and decline over many decades.
Compared to its historical peak at the end of World War II, the marriage rate has declined dramatically from about 16 marriages per 1,000 people in 1946 to about six in 2019 (See below). Continual declines over the past 50 years have resulted in marriage rates below even those observed at the nadir of the Great Depression, despite a stabilization that lasted through most of the 2010s.
Conclusion
A nation with declining marriage rates cannot long remain great.
These national marital trendlines are dramatically disturbing in that it is marriage that creates healthy children, keeps men focused on work, their own children and social responsibility, protects women from poverty, abuse and violence, and makes communities strong and prosperous. Research shows us that marriage and parenthood raise adult happiness like nothing else.
University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman has documented that when looking at happiness levels among the married and unmarried,
The happiness landslide comes entirely from the married. Low happiness characterizes all types of non-married. No subsequent population categorization will yield so large a difference in happiness across so many people.
We must reverse our dramatic declines in U.S. marriage rates for the well-being of our nation.
Image from Shutterstock.
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