US marriages slump to record low


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US marriages slump to record low

Barely half of Americans - a record low - are currently married, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

Just 51% of adult Americans are married, compared with 72% in 1960.

The median age of first marriage has also hit a new high, of 26.5 for brides and 28.7 for grooms.

Pew said the number of adults co-habitating, single-person households and single parents had meanwhile increased in recent decades.

The study found that just 20% of adults today aged 18 to 29 are married, compared with 59% in 1960.

It is unclear whether they are delaying matrimony or abandoning it altogether.

The analysis also found the number of new marriages in the US had declined by five percentage points between 2009-10.

This may not be linked wholly to the economic downturn, since a similar trend has continued in Europe regardless of business cycles.

Pew, a nonpartisan think tank and polling organisation, found the percentage of those Americans who have bee married at least once had declined as well - 72% in 2010, from 85% in 1960.

If the trend persists, in a few years less than half of Americans will be married.

While Pew did not study reasons for the trend, it noted that the marriage rate for college-educated adults declined "far less" than among the less-educated.

A Pew survey in 2010 found that four out of 10 Americans believed marriage was becoming "obsolete", but that 61% people who had never married would like to do so someday.

Source: BBC News

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I can see why this is happening, at least with those with a point of view that I lean towards.

I don't have a religion, so marriage in that aspect has no meaning or reason to me. The only reason I could see actually getting married would be for the tax breaks and other benefits you get from the government for having that status.

I know my GF want's to marry, so I'm sure when the time comes, I will be as well. But for any real significance, I don't see marriage having any. I can always promise to stay with my girl and remain faithful, without a ceremony.

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That's kind of sad. I guess I'm old-fashioned, though... I think it's far better for a child to be raised by parents who are married, or at least committed to each other and they work through whatever problems they have instead of splitting up. Teaches them so many things and is more stable. I probably wouldn't be so messed up if I'd had that kind of example :laugh:

I guess it's the world we live in now, though.

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That's kind of sad. I guess I'm old-fashioned, though... I think it's far better for a child to be raised by parents who are married, or at least committed to each other and they work through whatever problems they have instead of splitting up. Teaches them so many things and is more stable. I probably wouldn't be so messed up if I'd had that kind of example :laugh:

I guess it's the world we live in now, though.

Not getting married doesn't mean you don't want to stay together*... and that's the reason marriage rate is falling.

Since we don't live in an uitra-religious world any more, there are fewer and fewer reasons to get married.

People who want to split up do so whether they're married or not; the current divorce rate is about 40-50% AFAIK.

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I'm sure a lot of the reason has to do with the economy sucking, so people can't afford to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a single day. Granted you can get hitched at a court house or Vegas, but that's not exactly "classy". Another possible reason is similar but having to do with loans/expenses that have higher priority. More and more people are going to college, and then have a nice hefty stack of loans to pay off. That's basically the situation I'm in.

I have $60k in school loans to pay yet, will be buying a car as soon as the snow melts, will either get an apartment or condo with the gf in summer, and then somehow find some spare change to buy the stupidly expensive ring for her that I've decided on. I'd like to pop the question in the next year, but it's hard to see that easily possible in the next 5 years even, haha.

Or maybe it's that guys don't like seeing their hard earned cash go towards 300 pairs of high heals. :rofl:

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Think about all those gays that want to get married and cant, all that money waiting to be wasted on some over the top materialistic ceremony.

The churches loss.

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