Runaway Brides: Marriage Rate Hits Historic Low
By: Stephanie Castillo
Updated: December 14, 2011
In America, getting
married is not nearly as popular as it used to be.
Now, according to a
new Pew Research Center analysis released on Dec. 14, marriage rates
have hit a historic low.
Only a smidgen over
half of Americans are currently married, down from 72% in the
1960s. Between 2009 and 2010 alone, the marriage rate declined by 5%.
It's not entirely clear what's behind the drop - the Pew researchers'
data-crunching suggests that this is one area in which the economy is
not playing a huge role - but the ebbing of interest in marriage does
have several interesting features. And some of them suggest that a
little less marriage-mania might be a good thing for
the institution in the long run.
Let's be clear: a
majority of unmarried people - 61% - still want to get married, even
some of those who don't have a very rosy view of the institution. Almost
half - 47% - of people who think marriage is becoming
obsolete nevertheless still hope to get hitched, as do a roughly equal
percentage among people who don't think the coupled life is pass. The
biggest marriage naysayers, no surprise here, are the formerly married.
Only 27% of them want to get on that train
again.
Mostly, the Pew
report suggests, the declining rate of marriage has a lot to do with
age. "Among adults ages 18-24, the number who recently married dropped
13% between 2009 and 2010," write D'Vera Cohn and Wendy Wang
in the report, which included data from the Census and American
Community Survey. Numbers are also down for those in the 24-to-35 age
range and those 45 and older. But among folks aged 36 to 45, getting
married is as popular as ever, if not more so.
The median age at
which people marry is also rising, to 28.7 for men and 26.5 for women,
the highest it's ever been. Only 9% of 18-to-24-year-olds were married
in 2010, compared with 45% in 1960. But marriage is not
like network TV, where you have to get viewers in their youth, or lose
them forever. In fact, less buy-in by young people may not actually mean
the end of marriage so much as the end of fewer marriages. Isn't it
possible that a higher median age at marriage
might mean people are being more judicious before they jump into a
binding lifelong contract with another human being?
Even the racial
disparity in marriage rates may have something to do with age. More than
half (55%) of white people are married, compared with less than half
(48%) of Hispanics and about a third (31%) of blacks. The
disparity is significant, but since a larger proportion of the black and
Hispanic populations are younger, it may not be as marked as it looks,
Cohn and Wang note.
(Copyright: TIME) read more
(Copyright: TIME) read more
