Record Share of Young Adults Will Never Marry
February 27, 2024(Charlottesville, VA.)—For Immediate Release
Contact: Chris Bullivant
A record share of young adults are likely to never get married, according to new research by IFS research fellow Lyman Stone.
"Marriage is coming later and later in life, and for a growing share of Americans never coming at all,” said Stone. “As a result, young Americans today can expect to spend fewer of their healthy, active years with their spouse than any prior generation in American history."
In the new research brief, Stone finds:
- About 1-in-3 of today’s young adults (aged 18 or 19) are likely to have never been married by the time they turn 45. Never before in American history have there been so many never-married adults.
- For instance, only 61% of 35-year-old men were ever-married in 2023, down from 90% in 1980.
- For 35-year-old women, the share of ever-married women was 70% in 2023, down from 93% in 1980.
“This is one key indicator of what I call ‘The Closing of the American Heart’,” added Brad Wilcox, senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies and author of Get Married. “Given the importance of marriage for emotional and financial well-being, it suggests a large minority of Americans are going to be financially and emotionally vulnerable heading into mid- and late-life."
READ:
Lyman Stone, "1-in-3: A Record Share of Young Adults Will Never Marry," The Institute for Family Studies, February 2024
https://ifstudies.org/blog/1-in-3-a-record-share-of-young-adults-will-never-marry
ENDS.
