If the trends continue, then the growing number of single people will presumably begin to exert political pressure to eliminate the laws that favor and reward marriage and implicitly discriminate against them.
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June kicks off the U.S. wedding season. Whether you love nuptials or hate them, an astounding trend is occurring: fewer couples are tying the knot.
The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year. Since then, however, the total number of people getting married has fallen steadily. Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak.
As a result, barely more than half of adults in the U.S. say they’re living with a spouse. It is the lowest share on record, and down from 70 percent in 1967.
What’s behind this trend? Is marriage becoming obsolete? Why should we care?
Marriage rates are dropping too
The drop in marriages is even more dramatic when the rapid growth in the U.S. population is taken into account. In fact, the marriage rate is the lowest in at least 150 years.
The figure below shows the number of marriages per 1,000 people for the last century and ahalf. It does not matter if it is a person’s first, second or even third marriage. The rate simply tracks the number of weddings that occurred adjusted by the population.
In the late 1800s, about nine out of every 1,000 people got married each year. After rising in the early 1900s through World War I, the marriage rate plummeted during the Great Depression, when fewer people were able to afford starting a family. The rate shot up again at the end of World War II as servicemen returned home, eager to get hitched and have babies.
But since the early 1980s, the marriage rate has steadily dropped until it leveled off in 2009 at about seven per 1,000.
A global trend
It’s not just the U.S. where this is happening.
The United Nations gathered data for roughly 100 countries, showing how marriage rates changed from 1970 to 2005. Marriage rates fell in four-fifths of them.
Australia’s marriage rate, for example, fell from 9.3 marriages per 1,000 people in 1970 to 5.6 in 2005. Egypt’s declined from 9.3 to 7.2. In Poland, it dropped from 8.6 to 6.5.
The drop occurred in all types of countries, poor and rich. And it clearly wasn’t based on geography, since one of the biggest declines occurred in Cuba (13.4 to 5), while one of the biggest increases occurred in the neighboring island of Jamaica (4.9 to 8.7).
Among countries that experienced a reduction, the average rate fell from 8.2 marriages per 1,000 to just 5.2, which is an even lower rate than what the U.S. is now experiencing.
Why has the drop occurred?
The range of culprits is quite large.
Some blame widening U.S. income and wealth inequality. Others point the finger at the fall in religious adherence or cite the increase in education and income of women, making women choosier about whom to marry. Still others focus on rising student debt and rising housing costs, forcing people to put off marriage. Finally some believe marriage is simply an old, outdated tradition that is no longer necessary.
But given that this is a trend happening across the globe in a wide variety of countries with very different income, religious adherence, education and social factors, it’s hard to pin the blame on just a single culprit.
Don’t blame the government
Moreover, this drop in marriages is not occurring because of adverse legal or public policy changes. Governments across the globe continue to provide incentives and legal protections that encourage marriage.
For example, the U.S. federal government has over 1,000 laws that make special adjustments based on marital status. Many of these adjustments allow married couples to get preferential tax treatment and more retirement benefits, and bypass inheritance laws.
Moreover, government legalization of same-sex marriages around the world has boosted the number of individuals able to enter into legally sanctioned unions.
While legalizing same-sex marriages has boosted the number of marriages, this increase has not been enough to reverse the declining trend.
Is it a switch to cohabiting?
Another popular explanation for why fewer people are getting married is that more couples prefer to live together informally, known as cohabitation.
It is true that the percentage of people living with a partner instead of marrying has risen over time. In 1970 just half-of-one-percent of all adults were cohabiting in the U.S. Today the figure is 7.5 percent.
However, this trend fails to explain the whole story of falling marriage rates. Even when we combine the share of adults who are married with those who are cohabiting, the picture still reveals a strong downward trend. In the late 1960s, over 70 percent of all U.S. adults were either married or cohabiting. The most recent data show less than 60 percent of adults are living together in either a marriage or cohabiting relationship.
This means over time, a smaller percentage of people are living as a couple. The number of people living alone, without a spouse, partner, children or roommates has almost doubled. The number of people living by themselves in the U.S. was less than 8 percent in the late 1960s. Today’s it’s almost 15 percent.
Costs and benefits of marriage
So why have marriage rates declined around the world, while the number of people living on their own has exploded? In my mind, the simple answer is that for more people, the current costs of marriage outweigh the benefits.
The benefits of marriage are numerous and well-known. Researchers have linked marriage to better outcomes for children, less crime, an increase in longevity and happier lives, among many factors. My own research revealed that marriage is associated with more wealth.
Nevertheless, as Gary Becker pointed out in his widely used theory of marriage, these benefits don’t come for free. Marriage is hard work. Living with someone means taking into account another person’s feelings, moods, needs and desires instead of focusing just on your own. This extra work has large time, emotional and financial costs.
While decades ago many people believed the benefits of marriage outweighed these costs, the data around the world are clearly showing that more people are viewing the benefits of being married, or even cohabiting, as much smaller than the costs.
Why do we care?
As the wedding season takes hold, I have already been invited to a few nuptials, so it is clear marriage is not actually becoming obsolete.
Society today is geared toward couples. However, if the trends continue, then the growing number of single people will presumably begin to exert political pressure to eliminate the laws that favor and reward marriage and implicitly discriminate against them.
The question is: how large will this policy shift be and how soon until it occurs?
Originally Published on TheConversation.com
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Photo: Getty Images
Very good.
Marriage is a lose-lose-lose situation for men.
I think it is important to point out that the marriage gap only exists among poorer, less educated Americans. People in more affluent socioeconomic groups are marrying at the same rate, There is a discussion of the statistics at http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/ I think it is an interesting question whether men in the groups where marriage rates have dropped are consciously opting out of marriage because of feminism or (basically) “women suck” (as some commenters here are arguing) or whether it is a consequence of economic disadvantages, higher rates of incarceration and unemployment, higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse etc. Many… Read more »
“cite the increase in education and income of women, making women choosier about whom to marry.”
Interesting way of phrasing women have no interest in supporting a man financially, which is what it comes down to. I wonder if common law marriage is tracked and how it affects the decision of people who choose to not marry, but would otherwise cohabit.
It’s not just that, but in economically developed countries, population growth is in decline.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html
http://www.techinsider.io/do-it-for-denmark-ad-campaign-to-encourage-pregnancy-2015-10
Heck, in Japan people aren’t even having sex and and many don’t have a desire to.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex
I also heard the the U.S. population growth is largely die to immigrants and immigration. If marriage is about starting families. People at least in first world economies don’t really want to start them. If you think it’s bad now, wait for the sexbots.
Society today is geared toward couples. However, if the trends continue, then the growing number of single people will presumably begin to exert political pressure to eliminate the laws that favor and reward marriage and implicitly discriminate against them. lolwhat So removing a bunch of arbitrary benefits handed to married couples will then lead to discrimination? Why should those benefits even exist? Surely by existing, it is singletons are being discriminated against? This piece barely goes into any reason why these benefits *should* exist and seems to be implying that people today aren’t marrying because they aren’t able to share… Read more »
Hi Kim, Frog with no legs. It means argument from assumption rather than fact. There is an old joke: Scientist put a frog on a table and tell it to jump. It jumps They cut off it’s front legs and tell it to jump, it jumps. They cut off it’s rear legs and tell it to jump, it does not jump. The scientist conclude that a frog with no legs can’t hear. That is what this is. We have become so accustom to blaming men rather than ourselves that it is almost visceral, even in light of contradictory evidence. It… Read more »
I thank my God that I do not live in America, but in a country where men and women like each other and do not live all their life in the trenches of war. That is all I can say and I realize it is time for me to leave GMP and find my own tribe here in Europe. You write that men have come to a point where they do not care. I think that is a symptom of emotional disturbed damaged persons . Healthy individuals dare to love they dare to bond also with the opposite sex, AND… Read more »
@ KIM, “I thank my God that I do not live in America, but in a country where men and women like each other and do not live all their life in the trenches of war.” Yes, KIM. You do have much to be thankful for indeed. You have really hot the nail on the head KIM. The real issue here in America today is just as you have correctly identified: men and women really do not like one another any longer. I know I am going to catch a lot of crap for saying this but I have said… Read more »
I’m likewise done with commenting here, Kim, but I am commenting here just to answer you. You are assuming a reaction to be an action, Kim If, in your country your men face 40 years of male bashing and feminist abuse, their rights ended, their children stolen from them, and a continued blame game as you are demonstrating here, your men would be the same way, eventually. It’s taken a long time for men to get to this point, but it is what it is. Take that knowledge, that understanding of result with you, learn from it, so if and… Read more »
Watch and examine the reality of just the opposite of what you have been conditioned to see. It’s not misogyny, but misanthropy.
https://youtu.be/HeVKCj9_-Xc
Kim, Here is another, a female voice, a voice of innocence seeing what is transpiring, and why yet another lie that only men who cannot get a date are MRAs. There are more and more good women joining that movement because they see clearly what is transpiring. This is how feminism is influencing our kids and training them to disrespect men. This is a psychology course turned into a feminist hate class. Watch, especially at around 5 minutes in to the reaction to the one male that shared his story of domestic violence and then ask yourself why men shut… Read more »
It’s not just in USA.
The marriage rate in Sweden was about 5.5 per 1000 people during 2014, which is even lower than in the graph in the article. And I Think it’s in the same ballpark for most North-European countries.
So don’t make the mistake to assume this is isolated to USA.
“We have become so accustom to blaming men rather than ourselves that it is almost visceral, even in light of contradictory evidence.” Men tend to blame women (as we see is happening in many of the responses to the article) and women tend to blame men. It has nothing to do with men being larger victims of blame. The reality is that both sides tend to blame the other instead of looking inward at what they’ve done to contribute to the situation. When you frame the discussion as one where only women do this, and you refuse to see how… Read more »
DJ and Jules
And what about this hypotheses that this ?
Study find that use of pornography makes marriage unappealing to men.
I think it may be some truth in that,
http://www.westernjournalism.com/shocking-new-study-finds-link-pornography-declining-marriage-rates/
Let’s follow the chain of logic: If easy access to pornography now allows men access to sexual gratification without a partner, and consequently they opt out of marriage, that must mean that the promise of sexual gratification was the primary incentive to marry. They were NOT getting the love, respect, emotional support, security and belonging that marriage supposedly brings. But in marriage, men are still expected to be the providers: financially (by and large it’s still true), and of love, respect, emotional support, security and belonging. And there’s a very strong possibility that he’ll have to continue to be the… Read more »
Good point. Maybe it is as the focus seems to be on getting men to marry, not actual male happiness in marriage.
Jonathan G Yes the promise of sexual gratification was and is some men the primary incentive for marriage. You will find the same all over the world I think, wether they have on wife or several … Times are changing . Will the end of marriage be the end of family or will the institution of family continue or be replaced by something totally new? Where I live family is not that mportant any longer, nor is religion. The majority of young people do not get married but cohabite , with a variety of contracts that replaced the marriage contract,even… Read more »
@KIM,
“To have a good family is fantastic I am sure , but fortunately there are other other alternatives.”
Yes, the alternatives are what men are seeking. But, porn and wanking are not good alternatives. Just another form of self destructive behavior.
@ KIM There may be some truth to that. If marriage is the goal, we have to ask why. If it’s simply population growth for economic viability (some one had calculated the number of people needing to work to support a retired person, but I don’t remember the number), couldn’t robots and animation address a lot of that? Maybe marriage itself is unnecessary. If men are not getting married, I’d suspect that it’s because it doesn’t support their self interest. They see little return on investment or even a negative return. The solution would be to create an environment where… Read more »
“The question is: how large will this policy shift be and how soon until it occurs? ” When we stop dodging the real reason that marriage is begin shelved, and begin to examine the sexism and discrimination not only prevalent in marriage and reproductive law, but articles such as this that enforce such. Marriage holds not only no benefit for men, but extremely high risk. They have no reproductive rights, and they can be forced from their homes, their children, to be indentured for up to 22 years…and it can be done on a whim. I’ve just investigated a story… Read more »
DJ I am on my summer holiday and I am supposed to be unplugged…..but I can not help myself. What you say here make it sound like men and men alone are the ones that decide if there will be marriage or not. But as you well know women also play a part in all this . Women say yes or we say no ,just like men do….. I said yes once and have said no several times. I have also proposed but he declined with the words “I dare not go through one more time”. I think you know… Read more »
@ KIM, Hello KIM! I do hope you are enjoying your summer holiday! Thanks for the Atlantic piece. It was a nice piece to read. I think the “new” marriage referenced in this piece is really for the upper 20% of families. America’s middle class is shrinking. So, it is not something that is going to fit people who are not well educated with high incomes. The author made reference to a book by author Charles Murray, “Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010.” This is a fabulous book. I love Charles Murray. Charles Murray’s book looks at white… Read more »
Hi Jules Some sort of contract is needed when you set up house with someone, or plan to have children. I liked the HIP model in the article in the Atlantic. And I like that lots and lots of contracts to choose between. A good contract makes life better not worse. In Europe our discussion about marriage has another focus . The refugees , migrants from outside of Europe come to us and the wife can be a pregnant girl 11 years old married . Or still a minor with several children . Or a man married to four women,… Read more »
Jules here is another interesting article about the fact of marriage and divorce in America .For some groups the divorce rate is LOW
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html
@ KIM, Yes, overall the divorce rate is in fact declining. But, when we get behind the numbers, we see that the top 20% of households (by income) marriage rates are still stable AND divorce rate both low and stable. This group tends to be much better educated and better informed about marriage. They also tend to marry much later in life. Statistic show the later one marries in life the less likely one is to divorce. Here in America getting married in your 20 increases your chance of divorce by 30% or so. But, this marriage and divorce statistic… Read more »
Sorry about Orlando.
Some sort of contract is needed when you set up house with someone, or plan to have children. yes, but that contract needs to be balanced. you’d not buy a car that the former own could take back at any time without your consent or refund would you? Then how could you expect a man to do that with such a life altering decision of marriage? If a man and women marry, have kids, parental choice is off the table, but custody and support need to be balanced if divorced. The entire thing could be settled with mandatory joint legal… Read more »
Feminist biased article, kim, that ignores a great many realities and interjects a great deal of conjecture. When speaking of college educated parents it purposely avoids the education gap and that our boys only make up 30% of our college grads, which is a forthcoming roadblock that, in and of itself, deconstructs the entire notion. She also dismisses the middle and lower class that make up over 80% of marriages, that are and always have been the foundation for marriage, and that foundation is cracking. She is also being a bit deceptive in stating that women are also saying no.… Read more »
@ DJ..
I think this sums it from the male perspective,
http://suzannevenker.com/commentary/why-men-wont-marry-you/
Nail on the head, Jules.
I find it hard to trust you DJ . You have told us that you are a happily married man, “as happy as a pig in mud”. to use your own word. Still you applaud when other do not want to get married ,maybe because you see this the best strategy to change society. You have taken on the role of the mentor of young men, and guide them away from even wanting to get married and start a family while you yourself enjoy the bliss of marriage……hmmmm. And while you write a lot about fathers ,the importance of fatherhood,… Read more »
“I find it hard to trust you DJ . You have told us that you are a happily married man, “as happy as a pig in mud”. to use your own word. Still you applaud when other do not want to get married ,maybe because you see this the best strategy to change society.” Then don’t trust me. I don’t ask you to trust me, Kim, just ask the men I speak to…and they get it. I got lucky. When we met, she had more to lose then I did, I was broke, bankrupt from my previous adventures in the… Read more »
@ KIM I think the criticism is unwarranted. My cousin joined the U.S. Navy, spent 20 years in the reserves, went to college and took up computer programming. He’d go on to make $100 / hr., buy up a ton of Microsoft stock. He owns 3 houses now. Sometimes he works sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t care. He’s financially stable. He has a son and daughter, who he put through college. Instead of paying for their college, should he have told them to join the U.S. military since it worked out great for him. He has a pension, it paid… Read more »