WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new study ranks Kentucky No. 8 for the biggest decline in marriage since 2000. U.S. marriages are seeing a post-pandemic boom, but a long-term decline.
After hitting a record low during COVID-19, marriage rates rose to 6.2 marriages per 1,000 Americans in 2022 — the highest level since 2018 — according to new CDC data released in March. However, marriage rates remain historically low driven by socioeconomic and cultural shifts.
Grwn Diamonds today released a study on the State of American Marriage after analyzing the most recent data in all 50 states and D.C. from the CDC and the Census Bureau.
Kentucky ranks No. 8 after seeing marriage rates decline by 36.7% since the turn of the century.
Since 1970, the U.S. marriage rate has declined by nearly 60% – and it’s far from the only country to experience this shift. Across the OECD – a bloc of 38 democratic countries around the world – marriage rates have been falling for decades, with an average of 3.7 per 1,000 people.
Marriage has increased in only three states since 2000: D.C (69.4%), Montana (35.6%), and Connecticut (5.3%).
In Kentucky, residents are also waiting until they are older to tie the knot. The average age for men is 27.4 (up 0.3 years from 2010). The average age for women is 26.2 (up 0.8 years since 2010).
Thirty-six states, plus Washington, D.C., saw their marriage rates rebound to or above their pre-pandemic level in 2022, while marriage rates declined in 12 states between 2019 and 2022. Even so, the U.S. marriage rate remains at a historic low of 6.2 per 1,000 people, down from 8.2 in 2000.
Globally, the U.S. has the No. 7 highest marriage rate among 38 democratic nations analyzed.
After the pandemic forced people to postpone their weddings and stifled the dating scene, American marriages are on the upswing – there were nearly 2.1 million weddings in 2022, passing 2 million for the first time since 2019, according to newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That doesn’t mean that people are eschewing partnership altogether, though. In 2022, 46.9% of all U.S. households were married couples (with or without children), while another 7.3% were couples living together, according to Census Bureau data. Roughly half of men and women in the U.S. are married, and marriages are more stable than they were in the past.
The real trend, researchers say, is not the collapse of marriage as we know it – it’s that people are more open to different arrangements, and they’re waiting longer to tie the knot than ever before. The median age for men to get married for the first time is 30.2, up from 26.8 at the turn of the century. For women, that age has risen from 25.1 in 2000 to 28.4 today. In fact, the share of Americans who get married for the first time in their 40s, 50s, or 60s has quadrupled since 1990.
That’s a long-term shift, and it’s driven by a combination of factors: People are waiting until they have more financial and career stability before getting married, women have more economic independence than previous generations, gender roles in the home are evolving, and it’s more common than ever for partners to live together before taking the plunge. Today, researchers say marriage is a “capstone event,” not the entrance to adulthood.
