Marriage and Cohabitation in the U.S.
As more U.S. adults are delaying marriage – or forgoing it altogether – the share who have ever lived with an unmarried partner has been on the rise.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
As more U.S. adults are delaying marriage – or forgoing it altogether – the share who have ever lived with an unmarried partner has been on the rise.
The landscape of relationships in America has shifted dramatically in recent decades. Read eight facts about love and marriage in the country.
Changes in marriage and childbearing have reshaped the American family. These shifts are playing out somewhat differently across urban, suburban and rural counties.
The share of U.S. children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping from 13% to 32% in 2017.
One-in-four parents living with a child in the United States today are unmarried, up from 7% in 1968. A growing share of unmarried parents are cohabiting partners.
Long-term growth in total U.S. births has been driven by the foreign born, who accounted for 23% of all babies born in 2014.
In 2014, just 14% of children younger than 18 lived with a stay-at-home mother and a working father who were in their first marriage. In 1960, half of children were living in this arrangement.
Just 46% of U.S. kids under 18 are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage, a marked change from 1960.
In 2013, 40% of new marriages in the U.S. included at least one partner who had been married before. Almost 42 million Americans have been married more than once, up from 22 million 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.
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