New census data show more Americans are tying the knot, but mostly it’s the college-educated
Marriage is back – at least, a little bit, and with some caveats.
Marriage is back – at least, a little bit, and with some caveats.
Same-sex marriage is now legal in Washington, D.C., and 17 states (and Arkansas will join them, if a lower-court judge’s ruling last week is upheld). Now the federal government’s task is to produce an accurate count of same-sex married couples.
New data released this week from the U.S. Census Bureau reaffirm the strong linkage between educational attainment and the marital status and living arrangements of parents of minor children
A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The share was just 11% in 1960.
This posting explores statistics about marriage rates, median age at first marriage and attitudes about marriage. Although the marriage rate is at a record low, most never-married Americans say they would like to marry. “Love” is cited more than other factors as a reason to get married, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
The number of Americans who recently wed has been declining for years, and 2011 was no exception, according to estimates from the American Community Survey. An estimated 4.2 million Americans were newlyweds in 2011, about the same as in 2010 and sharply lower than in 2008.
At the Population Association of America’s annual conference in San Francisco this week, papers on the recession’s impact on families, wealth, children, young adults, older Americans and other realms of life will be presented in at least 10 of the 200-plus sessions. Much of the research is preliminary, but it raises intriguing questions. One paper tries to assess whether the poor economy has affected divorce rates.
The share of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased to 15.1% in 2010, more than double the share in 1980.
Barely half of all adults in the United States—a record low—are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides and grooms.
In the last 50 years, fathers have become much more involved in the day-to-day lives of the children they live with. During that same time period, though, the share of fathers living apart from their children has risen dramatically, to 27% in 2010.
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