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US Marriage Rate Hits Record Low

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The US marriage rate is at its lowest since the federal government began collecting data in 1867, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported on Wednesday. Lead author of the report Sally Curtin told the Wall Street Journal: “Millennials are in peak marriage years, their 20s and 30s, and it’s still dropping. This is historic.”

According to the NCHS finding, there were only 6.5 marriages for every 1000 people in 2018, the last year analysed. This was a 6 percent drop from 6.9 marriages for every 1000 people in 2017, the Hill reports. A previous dramatic drop in the marriage rate occurred at the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In 1970, around 7 out of 10 adults were married and living with a spouse. In 2019 this figure dropped to half. In 1970, less than one percent of adults said they lived with a partner; in 2019 seven percent said they were living with a partner.

Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland told US News: “Women’s independence and gender equality is a huge factor in the long-term decline in marriage.” Lack of finances has also been given as an explanation for not marrying, US News reports. In 2017 the Pew Research Center found that 41% of adults who said they might marry in the future had cited financial instability as the reason they had not yet done so.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal about the impact of coronavirus on marriage, Ms Curtin said: “A lot of it is the economy, and the extent to which COVID has a lasting effect on the economy, it might affect family formation.”