Data released yesterday shows wedding bells are growing ever-fainter in states across America. This decline in marriage can be seen in the data even before any potential impact of the coronavirus, which is expected to lower the numbers even further due to social distancing-related delays. According to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics, marriage rates hit an all-time low in 2018, the most recently recorded year. The national marriage rate fell from 6.9 to 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people from 2017 to 2018. The dip was the first noticeable change in a fairly-stable trend over the past decade, following a long decline starting in the mid-1980s. As recently as 2001, the national rate was 8.2 marriages per 1,000 people. United States marriage rate, 1900-2018 Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. Marriage is an intensely personal decision, but also has economic and social dimensions. The dramatic high point in the marriage rate followed the end of World War II, while the Great Depression caused a notable decline in the early 1930s. More recently, reviewing marriage trends by region shows that states that previously had higher rates of marriage, including those in the West and South, have converged to the lower levels which have been normal for decades in the Northeast. Marriage rates by region (1900, 1995, 1999-2018) Outliers (NV, HI) suppressed. Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System.
Over the past two decades, state-level data has shown near-universal declines in marriage rates. However, a few states saw a modest increase, possibly driven by the legalization of same-sex marriage, notably Massachusetts, California, and Montana. The District of Columbia saw the highest rise, with a 60% increase in weddings over that timeframe. Marriage rates by region (1900, 1995, 1999-2018) Outliers (NV, HI) suppressed. Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. Over the past 18 years, the national marriage rate has fallen by about 20 percent, with the decline concentrated among states in the South. At the same time, the divorce rate fell by about 30 percent nationally, possibly a result of self-selection out of marriage by lower-educated or low-income individuals and fewer marriages occurring in the first place. States with the smallest declines in divorce were predominantly located in the northeast, while some states in the South saw divorce rates fall by a third. Change in marriage rates by state, 2000 to 2018 Dashed line is national average (-20.8%). Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. Change in divorce rates by state, 2000 to 2018 Dashed line is national average (-28.8%). Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. There may be some compositional effects at work – as the U.S. population ages, more people move out of what we might consider “prime age” for marriage. Since 2005, the fraction of the U.S. population between the ages of 18 and 54 as a share of the total population has fallen from 52.1 to 48.6 percent. If we control for that dynamic, we can see that some – but not all – of the recent decline in marriage is attributable to demographic factors. (The green dashed line shows the rate of marriage among the age group we’ve defined, while the blue dotted line shows what the marriage rate would be if the U.S. still had the age profile it did in 2005.) There was even an increase in the adjusted marriage rate, controlling for demographic shifts, from 2009 to 2016. But drop in recent years is noticeable across the board, no matter the analysis. United States marriage rate (2005-2018) Source: ACS 1-year estimates; CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. While marriage rates have declined for everyone, past Social Capital Project research illustrates that rates have particularly declined among minorities and those in middle and lower economic quintiles. Decreased marriage is associated with increases in unwed childbearing over the last several decades, particularly for these groups. One of the goals of the Social Capital Project is straightforward: “We want more children in happy married-parent families.” This goal is potentially made more difficult as marriage becomes rarer and more selective. Recognizing the social and economic barriers that cause more couples to put off marriage should be a priority for policymakers, and the SCP will continue to study these trends in detail. Patrick T. Brown, senior policy advisor, with assistance from Rachel Sheffield, senior policy advisor.
In a 1936 report published by the New York Times, two University of Chicago sociologists warned of an unlikely epidemic: people staying single. Americans were avoiding getting hitched so much the researchers warned that the country had a “marriage deficit” of about 750,000 due to the Great Depression. The year 1932, when unemployment climbed over 23 percent, saw the lowest number of marriages since records began in the 1880s, they calculated, estimating that more than a million children had gone unconceived. And though the marriage rate bounced back after that year, the researchers warned of a lingering impact. “Many of the couples deterred by the depression will eventually marry,” they hypothesized, “but as couples become older they have few children.” As the United States once again sinks into recession, a look at the past offers valuable pointers to what we might expect with marriages in the coming months. Historical statistics can also tell us something — though not everything — about what this moment may mean for our own solemnities. The marriage rate dropped by 20 percent during the Great Depression, between 1929 and 1933.A 2014 analysis of marriage rates during that period by Matthew J. Hill, a professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, found that when male unemployment increased by 5 percent, the probability of marriage for both men and women went down about 4 percent. Hill cautions that the data is difficult to disentangle — but says both fertility and divorce also dropped during the depression. Not only are both related to marriage, but both are expensive propositions. The Great Recession, too, saw declines in marriage and fertility rates — though not as pronounced as those during the Depression. The marriage rate dropped by more than 4 percentage points between 2008 and 2011, according to an analysis of American Community Survey data by researchers at the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. Whether we can expect a repeat of that in this downturn depends on how exactly the coronavirus plays out, says Dr. Orestes “Pat” Hastings at Colorado State University — who’s analyzed the effects of the recession on unions and births. “I think it’s very hard to say how the Great Recession applies to our current moment,” he says. “But … if this persists, then I would expect to see further drops in marriage and fertility, based on people’s financial concerns and the economic uncertainty.” Physical distancing, too, could affect how people form relationships.  Of course, marriage and relationships have become increasingly decoupled in recent decades, so it’s possible that marriage isn’t as important as it used to be to a functioning society. And the pomp of weddings has, to many, gotten totally out of hand. The average cost of an American wedding in 2019, according to wedding site The Knot, was close to $34,000. The average household income is just over $63,000 — granted, The Knot survey’s respondents were likely more into weddings than your average human beings and thus the price may be exaggerated, but still that’s 53 percent of what the average U.S. household makes in a year. Surprisingly, weddings during the Depression took a big chunk out of household income too. One calculation from 1939 found that the average wedding then cost nearly $400, or about 25 percent of the average yearly household income. Not as bad as in 2019, but still a massive amount of change to blow when basic necessities were difficult to come by for many. Still, even if people persist with courthouse weddings — or weddings on Zoom — the fact remains that marriages have already declined precipitously. In fact, a CDC analysis released in April found that 2018, the last year with recorded data, saw the lowest marriage rates in America ever, even lower than 1932. So perhaps a further dip will simply be a sign of continuing trends, rather than another recession drop. For those still planning to tie the knot, Hill’s analysis also found some interesting wrinkles. Those who married just before the Great Depression were more likely to end up divorced than those who got married at other times, and those who married during the depths of the Depression were less likely to be divorced later on. “Essentially, your marriage is more likely to last if it began in hard times rather than good times,” he says. “In econ-speak, the people married during the Great Depression must have been well-matched on unobservable characteristics. In human-speak, these people must have really been in love to marry during the Great Depression.” |
Why did the marriage rate in the united states fall to a historical low around 1933?
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