Marriage, or the union of two people in holy matrimony, is an important step in the journey of life for most Americans. Here, recorded data on the number of married people in the United States will be displayed to find trends in marriage data stratified by a number of characteristics.
Ages labeled 25, 35, and 45 indicate the age ranges 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54 respectively.
First, the National Marriage Rate is displayed below as the number of new marriages in one calendar year over twenty years.
There is a downward trend in the number of new marriages every year since the year 2001. It is also interesting to note that the number of marriages in 2020 sharply declined from the previous year, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic which discouraged large gatherings.
Below is an interactive map of the United States and the Marriage Rate out of a 1,000 for each state as described by lighter and darker shades.
States for which there is no data available that year are filled with the deepest shade of purple to indicate no data.
On the whole, it is clear that while there is variability and fluctuation state by state and year by year, the entire map shows that the United States gets darker in color over time. Therefore, it’s evident that the mean rate of marriage for all fifty states is decreasing from the period 1990 to 2020.
This animated chart is intended to see patterns with both age and economic status and how they relate to the American marriage rate. The three graphs below each chart the marriage rate for three economic classes: rich, middle class, and poor. Each graph chart represents a different age bracket and the timeline at the bottom of the animation shows how this data varies over the years.
From the three graphs below, it is clear to see the marriage rate in generally higher for people of higher economic status. Furthermore, people of lower economic status seem to be putting off marrying until later in life, as the marriage rate is substantially higher in the older age graphs. In addition, all economic classes have seen a large decrease in marriage rates since 1960.
One interesting and often-asked question is if the marriage rate grouped by education level shows anything noteworthy about the type of person most likely to marry.
The animation below includes the following education levels distinguished by color for each age bracket: high school diploma or less (blue), some college (red), bachelor’s degree (green), and graduate level (purple).
From the 1960s, marriage rates seem to have flip flopped for people of different education statuses. Initially, people with less education had a higher marriage rate than the more educated. However, as time went on, people with graduate and bachelor’s degrees have overtaken the lower educated in marriage rate. All education statuses are evidently putting off marriage until they get older in the present day. Furthermore, there is a decrease in marriage rates for all education statuses and ages over time.
Next, information about marriage statistics between races was compiled and illustrated in the figure below.
As evident from this visualization, Black Americans have the lowest marriage rates out of White Americans and Hispanic Americans. White Americans have the highest marriage rate of the three. It can be seen that Black Americans are saving marriage until later in life, as their marriage rate somewhat catches up to the other two races for the 45-54 age bracket.Furthermore, the marriage rate for all races and ages has decreased over time, showing the average trend of a lower marriage rate for all.
One final relationship worth mentioning is how having kids affects marriage rates in couples.
The rate of marriages occurring with kids far outweighed the rate of marriages with kids in the 20th century. This could be because people with children wish to seek help with raising their child, not wanting to be a single parent.
First, the national statistics on divorce will be inspected over a period of the last twenty years.
The divorce rate in the United states has declined over the years but more slowly than marriage rates have declined. To give some perspective, in the year 2000, the marriage rate was 8% and the divorce rate was 4% but in the year 2020, the marriage rate dropped to about 5% and the divorce rate only dropped to about 2.5%.
Below is an interactive map of the United States and the Divorce Rate out of a 1,000 for each state as described by lighter and darker shades.
States for which there is no data available that year are filled with the deepest shade of purple to indicate no data.
On the whole, it is clear that while there is variability and fluctuation state by state and year by year, the entire map shows that the United States gets darker in color over time. Therefore, it’s evident that the mean rate of divorce for all fifty states is decreasing from the period 1990 to 2020.
This animated chart is intended to see patterns with both age and economic status and how they relate to the American divorce rate. The three graphs below each chart the divorce rate for three economic classes: rich, middle class, and poor. Each graph chart represents a different age bracket and the timeline at the bottom of the animation shows how this data varies over the years.
From the three graphs below, it is clear to see that the rate of divorce tends to be much higher for persons with worse economic status. Furthermore, most people generally get a divorce the older they are for every economic status.
The visual below includes the following divorce rates along with education levels for each age bracket distinguished by color: high school diploma or less (blue), some college (red), bachelor’s degree (green), and graduate level (purple).
Generally speaking, those with more education tend to divorce less often and this has been a stagnant fact for the last twenty years. For couples with less education, divorce rates are substantially higher and have been increasing over the last twenty years.
The divorce rate is generally higher, but not much higher, for older couples, which probably debunks the conventional wisdom in some ways that couples who divorce are always old.