Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low
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.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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.
Money-sharing by cohabiting couples is the topic of this article, which focuses on the Census Bureau’s new alternative measure of poverty. Cohabiting couples are much less likely to be considered poor under the alternative measure than the official measure of poverty’; the major reason is that the alternative measure assumes such couples share expenses, while the official measure assumes they are separate economic units.
Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle in the United States. The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education—without college degrees—are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.
A report from the center’s Social & Demographic Trends project, “The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families,” finds that nearly four-in-ten Americans (39%) say that marriage is becoming obsolete.
More than 2,000 demographers, sociologists and others converged on Washington, D.C., last week for the Population Association of America’s annual meeting.
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