Key Study Notes Disturbing Drop in Marriage Rates, But Strong Believers Still Very Likely to Marry
September 15, 2022
It has unfortunately been well established that marriage rates have been declining in the United States and across the developed world for decades now. But a new report from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) indicates that marriages have faced an increasingly precipitous decline since the middle of the previous decade. They explain, “Despite steady population increases each year, the number of marriages has been decreasing over the last 20 years” overall. The trend line is not encouraging.
But they also report new research just published in the Journal of Adult Development tells us an interesting story about who is still marrying. A team five scholars from Syracuse University explain, “We found statistically significant relationships between stronger religiosity and greater likelihood of marriage” with larger effects for seriously religious men than women. In short, young men and women who take their faith very seriously are much more likely to marry compared to their non-believing or moderately believing peers. And men who are very serious in their faith are the most likely.
