Highlights
- Higher marriage rates tend to be found in suburban regions, whereas lower marriage rates are often found in the center of major cities. Post This
- The percentage of households with children led by a married couple tends to be higher in more affluent, suburban regions, but lower in urban centers and parts of the Southeast. Post This
In a new IFS report, we map the geography of family structure in the United States, identifying areas where married and married-parent households are either highly prevalent or notably scarce. Using newly-constructed maps and rankings based on 2020 Census data, we introduce two related concepts—marriage deserts and married-family deserts—to describe places where stable, married-family life is uncommon, alongside their counterparts, marriage gardens and married-family gardens, where it is most prevalent.
The analysis is motivated by a large body of research showing that family structure is closely associated with economic mobility and broader measures of social capital. As other research has found, the share of children growing up in two-parent households is one of the strongest predictors of upward mobility within a community. Yet this aspect of social life is not evenly distributed across the United States. This report and its corresponding maps seek to visualize these differences, mapping America’s family divide.
To do so, we examine two measures at the level of Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs), geographic units that generally contain 100,000 to 200,000 individuals each. First, we measure the share of householders ages 15–64 who are married. Second, we measure the share of households with children that are headed by married couples.
This report also serves as a complement to our Get Married Maps, which illustrate parts of the country with particularly high or low marriage rates. While the Get Married Maps will be of most use to those looking to find a spouse, the maps in this report can help newlyweds determine which areas have particularly large shares of other married couples—and, thus, potentially stronger communities and support networks.
Two Key Findings
1. Marriage is far more common in certain parts of the United States than in others.
Higher marriage rates tend to be found in suburban regions, whereas lower marriage rates are often found in the center of major cities.
The following table shows the bottom-10 PUMAs by marriage share. In the nation’s top marriage deserts, the share of householders ages 15–64 who are married is between approximately 13% and 17%.
In the largest marriage gardens, by contrast, roughly three-quarters of householders—between 74% and 79%—are married.
2. The percentage of households with children that are led by a married couple tends to be higher in more affluent, suburban regions, but lower in urban centers and parts of the Southeastern United States.
As the following table shows, in the top married-family deserts, only around 18% to 26% of households with children are headed by married couples. Meanwhile, in the top married-family gardens (not shown), the corresponding figure rises to approximately 86% to 89 percent.
3. The largest grouped marriage desert in the US, with over 686,000 householders between 15 and 64, is found in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the largest grouped marriage garden, with over 630,000 householders in this same age range, is located in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, identified by grouping together contiguous PUMA-level marriage deserts and marriage gardens.
4. The largest grouped married-family desert, with around 178,000 households with children, is located in Manhattan and the Bronx. It is located relatively close to the largest grouped married-family garden, which spans from the suburbs of DC to those of Philadelphia and includes around 386,000 households with children.
