The Decline of Marriage

Julissa Cruz writes,

The proportion of women married was highest in 1950 at approximately 65%. Today, less than half (47%) of women 15 and over are married—-the lowest percentage since the turn of the century.

Pointer from Timothy Taylor.

Note also that Nick Schulz quietly published a short book on this topic. I have just started reading it.

3 thoughts on “The Decline of Marriage

  1. Isn’t that skewed by the fact that they are counting 15 year olds? These days very few 15-18 year olds are married, you know? Those ages have different implications now than they may have earlier. If you’re interested in teen marriage, pick those ages only. If you’re interested in ages people get married, report the ages. If you want to know, in general, if marriage is declining among adult women, you have to use only data for actual adult women.

  2. Katie is right. Women today marry on average at 27; in 1950 it was closer to 20. Eighty percent of women marry at some point. Though that’s down from 90% in the mid century,it’s still the large majority. The big story is that though the age of marriage has gone up markedly, the age of first birth has not. I co-authored a report on the “crossover” between marriage and birth ages; you can find it here: http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KnotYet-FinalForWeb.pdf

    • Katie is only partially right. The radical shift in the age-distribution of the population is also a large factor. But if people are older on average, the ratio of middle-aged to youth higher, then one would expect the marriage rate to go up, not down.

      So the net decrease we observe shows the underlying phenomenon is actually stronger than we see. An age-cohort analysis of the data would be helpful, but in general, if it were only a matter of a seven-year delay in marriage age, it would only reduce the proportion of women married by about 10% (assuming a longevity estimate of 70 years).

      But that’s not what we see at all. Since the 1950’s (when there really weren’t all that many 15-17 year-old marriages anyway) the black rate went from 65% to 26% – down 60%. The hispanic rate went from 65 to 42 – down 35%. The white rate went from 69 to 50 – down 37%.

      That’s not explicable due to later-marriage age alone.

      Also, look at the marriage rate data. If the population flows (in from unmarried 15 year olds, and out from death) are basically balanced, then the choice of age of marriage has no impact at all mathematically on the number of marriages per stock of unmarried females above 15. And yet the rate has declined from 90 to 30 – a stunning two thirds lower.

      This despite the fact that divorces are more common than in the 1950’s, so second marriages should be pushing the number up. Again, like above, the fact that it is going down means the phenomenon at work is greater than it appears, not less.

      At any rate – the point of such studies is really getting at the larger subject of the change in the way people are living most of their lives. I’ve blegged before for the percentage of children brought up by both married biological parents from birth to 18, but no one seems to know the answer.

      My hunch is that it’s a stunning drop over the last half century from near 90 to less than 40, and in some particularly bad underclass neighborhoods, perhaps low single digits. Know of any place I can find that number?

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