Who’s Getting Married in the U.S. Today?

By: Wiona Tan, Eric Xia, Alyssa Liu, and Lina Molla

Marriages are thought to be one of the many important milestones in one’s life. Many factors can also contribute when people decide to marry such as financial stability or readiness to settle down. Yet, when looking at general trends within the United States, we see that the primary trend is a decline in marriage rates. Within the 21st century, marriages within the United States have shown a steady decline such that in 2020, there was the lowest marriage rate recorded since the United States began recording marriages. We wanted to further explore this decline in marriage rates and dive into the various trends and demographics within the United States such as age, income, and even rates of people who remarry in order to draw conclusions about why marriages are declining and for what reasons. In this article, we will look to explore various characteristics and trends within United States marriages and draw conclusions as to what factors contribute to people’s decisions to get married.

Overview of the Datasets:

When finding information about marriages and the overall demographics of those within marriages, we sourced from various resources including the CDC, PEW Research, US census, and Kaggle. Within these datasets, we looked at various characteristics such as the age of those married, states where people are being married, and even what education level are those within the United States marrying. Throughout this article, we will examine various trends and demographics of marriages and even divorces, to help better understand the marriage landscape of the United States.

General Marriage Trends within the U.S.

Before diving into the topic of marriage, we first need to understand the basic trends of marriage decrease. In doing so, we also decided to examine if divorce rates likewise had similar trends in marriages.

The graph above shows the marriage and divorce rate per 1,000 people of the total population in the US from the year 2000 to 2020. This dataset was calculated from the provisional counts received from the State health departments. As we can see, both the overall marriage and the divorce rate have been steadily decreasing for the past 20 years with the marriage and divorce rate both peaking at 8.2 and 4 respectively in the year 2000 and dropping to 5.1 and 2.3 in 2020. Here, we also see that 2020 received the lowest on record divorce and marriage rate of any previous year.

The first characteristic we wanted to examine was the age in relation to the rates of those married. Specifically, we aimed to understand if there was likewise an increase or decrease in age individuals were choosing to get married. In looking at age specifically, we wanted to see if there was a conflicting relationship between age and marriage and divorce rates as if people are marrying later in life, this could suggest Americans value other pursuits such as education which would cause Americans to marry later and potentially decrease the overall marriage rates within the United States.

This graph shows the median age men and women get married for the first time from 1890 all the way to 2021. As you can see from the graph, men consistently tend to get married at an older age than women. Over time, the overall age that men and women get married did increase. In 1980, men were at a low of 24.7, and women were at a low of 22. At a fairly steady increase, by 2021, women increased to 28.6, and men increased to 30.4. Overall, we can see that the ages of those who are first getting married within the United States re increasingly later in life.

From this trend, we can see that there is a clear increase in age people are getting married as well as a decrease in marriage rates. Because of this, we wanted to seek reasons as to what might be causing this delay in marriage. If there was a driving force behind Americans choosing to marry later or if perhaps it is merely a cultural phenomenon occurring within the United States.

To start exploring the “why” there is this older shift of people who choose to get married, we wanted to first look at the education levels of various groups. We wanted to start by seeing if there was a trend in education levels among people who were deciding to be married. Could this decrease in marriage be due to the fact that there are more people who push marriage off as they pursue higher education, thus leading to an overall decrease in marriage rates and as a result divorce rate within the United States? And in examining such, we hope to see if educational reasons may be a prominent factor in driving later marriages.

When looking at patterns within marriage, we wanted to identify trends that might explain why individuals within the United States are choosing to marry later in life. This graph shows the marriage rate of people between the ages of 25–34 from the year 1990–to 2012 based on their level of education. From the visualization, we can see that the marriage rate among people from this age group is actually increasing over the years. It is also interesting to note that the marriage rate among people with only a high school education is not only growing the fastest but also stands out to be the highest, especially in the years after 2010. On the other hand, the marriage rate among people with a graduate degree is growing the slowest and is significantly less than the rate of those with lower levels of education.

From this graph, we see an increase in all education levels, suggesting a shift within the United States for individuals to seek education. However, there is the largest increase within the high school demographic, which is a young age, and would not support the notion that Americans are simply pushing off marriage in pursuit of school. Given this, there is an increasing trend within every other education level group, perhaps correlating with the idea that Americans are in fact putting more importance on individual education, sacrificing earlier marriage or marriage as an entirety.

Though many are driven to pursue greater levels of education and may as a result push back marriage, causing older people to be married as well as potentially decreasing overall marriage rates, we also wanted to understand the financial makeup of the United States. We wanted to also examine if there was a correlation between how much Americans make and if there was also an increasing trend in the amount Americans made in annual income.

Here, the graph exhibits the median income of married couples from 2000 to 2020. As you can see, the median income has steadily increased over time by around $30,000 since 2000. The increase per year became more substantial after 2013. From 2000 to 2013, income only increased by around $10,000. From 2013 to 2020, income had increased by around $20,000. Ultimately, we can conclude that there is an increasing trend in the amount Americans make annually as well as an increase in the age that Americans are choosing to tie the knot, suggesting potential trends within the United States for individuals to withhold on marriage to be more financially stable.

Why Marriage/ Divorce & Marriage

In this next section, we also wanted to explore reasons people get married as well as compare rates of divorce. Here, we began by looking at a common, fun trait: horoscopes. People often look at their horoscopes to show “compatibility” between two people. For understanding why couples get married, we wanted to explore if this assertion had any implications to genuine relationships of people.

Her, we can see that there is no correlation between the months of individuals’ birth dates and their compatibility. Though horoscopes might be a fun way to spark initial talks, we see no indication of patterns between various individuals born within a certain month. For all those who heavily rely on horoscopes when making predictions about your future partner, this might make you think twice before rejecting or being interested in someone based on horoscope signs!

Next, we wanted to look at a poll conducted by PEW on reasons why individuals choose to get married:

Here we explored the qualitative data surrounding reasons for couples actually getting married. We can see that most couples chose reasons such as “love” 88%, “commitment” 81%, and “companionship” 76% as the top reasons why they decided to be married. In looking at this data, we can see that common sentiments surrounding love and commitment are driving factors in reasons why people are choosing to be married.

Because we started by looking at a decreasing trend in marriage and divorce rates, we also wanted to see if there were interesting insights or commonalities between “why” people chose to also get divorced.

Here, we identified a strong sense of couples being emotionally attached. Though acts of infidelity, drinking, and drugs played factors into the separation of many couples within the United States, most couples attribute their divorces to the inability to connect and grow with their partner.

With common romantic themes of love and commitment driving people to marriage, it is shown that feelings of being isolated or not compatible are the reasons that drive individuals within America to divorce.

Geographic Drive in Marriage & Divorce

We specifically dove into breaking down marriage and divorce rates by state, looking to see if it was any particular state contributing to divorce rates within the United States.

When first looking at the marriage breakdown by state, we were curious if perhaps more urban or rural states would result in there being a higher or even lower level of marriage.

We can see that for the most part, there is a common trend within the number of marriages per state with Nevada being a strong outlier with a near 50 marriage rate. In looking at this graph, we can conclude that there may not be a particular geographic pull, especially when looking at states.

However, when diving into divorce rates, we wanted to see if there were similar or different trends.

With this data from the US Census, we see that Nebraska, Arkansas, and Idaho all contribute high rates to divorces within America. Here we do not narrow down traits of either urban or rural states contributing higher to divorce rates within the United States.

We next wanted to explore the reasons individuals cited for deciding to get divorced within the United States.

Divorce is not the End!

However, divorce is not nearly the end of marriages for all. Individuals choosing to get remarried is a common occurrence within the United States.

Though nearly 60% of all marriages are between two couples who both have never been married, nearly 20% of all marriages are between two spouses who have already walked down the aisle with another 20% with at least one partner having already been married. In seeing this combined 40% of all couples in the United States have at least one partner remarried, this shows that divorce is never the end for many seeking marriages within the United States.

Finally, we also compared the breakdown of gender between those choosing to be remarried after divorce.

From the US Census, we can see that on average men tend to remarry more often than women with nearly 64% of men divorced choosing to remarry. However, women remarry on average about 52% of the time following a divorce.

Conclusion

Overall, when examining these trends, we can see that there is a definite decline in marriage and divorce rates within the United States. Given trends in the increase in age people are choosing to be married, we can correlate with a shift in the United States that there are reasons Americans are choosing to marry later in life or perhaps not marry at all, leading to lower divorce rates. We then explored marriages based on education and saw that there was a general increase in all educational levels of marriages, particularly within high school education levels. Here, we concluded that there is an overall trend in marriage rates from all education levels increasing, meaning that individuals potentially may delay marriage in pursuit of these higher levels of education. Finally, we saw that there was a steady increase in median income within the United States, likewise suggesting that Americans as a whole show an emphasis on financial stability.

Moreover, when breaking the United States down by states, we did not find any definite trends in either divorce or marriage rates amongst more urban or rural states. And we know that divorce is never truly the end of a marriage for most and saw that it was highly common for Americans to be remarried!

In all, the trend of Americans decreasing in marriage and divorce rate can largely be a combination of factors ranging from financial stability to valuing education, thus this decrease may not be a negative reflection of love being dead in the United States but perhaps a reflection of a society that values education and stability.