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| Estimated Number of Printed Pages: 18
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| TOPICS COVERED: In the U.S., we hear how everyone is getting married later and later. Usually, this is seen as a crisis - as if the social fabric will come apart without a steady pace of marriage. As one author wrote in "Break-up of the Family": “Late marriages [are] one of the most potent causes of the break-up of the family, for now women are no longer caught and rushed young; they are no longer burdened matrons at thirty. . . Now men prefer women of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, forsake the bachfisch for her mother, because the mother has personality, experience, can stimulate, amuse, and accompany. Only the older and more formed woman is no longer willing to enter the family as a jail; she will enter it only as a hotel.”* But that article was written over 90 years ago – in 1916!
Those who've read Why Do I Love These People already know the statistical truth: we might delay marriage, but we're still ultimately getting hitched. (Over 90 percent of people will marry at some point in their lives).
So is the delay of marriage a bad thing, or a good thing? It helps to know that it's not a new thing, and it's not merely an American phenomenon. Not even close. It's true all over the world. And when you put it in that context, it might have less to do with "expecting too much in marriage" and more to do with job availability and the increasing value on getting a complete education. The average age of marriage has always fluctuated in response to whatever is going on in society (including wars). Consider also that getting married young increases the chance of getting divorced (statistically). Fifty years ago, the United States went through a boom in young marriages, followed by a boom in babies, followed by . . . a boom in divorces. Coincidence?
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| The 2003 median age for a U.S. male’s first marriage. 1.
25.3
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| The 2003 median age for a U.S. female’s first marriage. 2.
The Northeast
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| Men and women who live in the Northeast marry significantly later than those in the rest of the United States. 3.
The Northeast
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| Men and women who live in the Northeast marry significantly later than those in the rest of the United States. 4.
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| U.S. Census analysis has shown that the states with higher percentages of unmarried couples also usually have higher ages at first marriage. But is it that they are living together, because they aren't getting married, or are they not getting married because they're living together? 5.
Washington, DC
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| The District of Columbia's age at first marriage is the highest in the U.S.: 30.1 for men and 29.9 for women. D.C. also has the nation's highest percentage of its population with a Bachelor's Degree or higher – 47.5 percent. And it has one of the higher percentage of unmarried couple households. 6.
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In our chart at the right, the y-axis represents the U.S. median age at first marriage, the x-axis being the years 1890 (on the far left) to 2003 (to the right).
In 1890, the median age for a woman's first marriage was just 22.0 for women and 26.1 for men.
For almost a century, marriage ages were lower than they were in 1890.
It wasn't until 1979 that women were consistently getting married at an age higher than that of 1890 levels.
And it wasn't until 1989 that the men were getting married at the same age as those who got married in 1890. 7.
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| “Millions of men and women had been forced to postpone marrying during the hard times of the 1930s and the austerity and separation brought about by the war. It was not surprising, then, that they married in record numbers in the late 1940s and . . . the birth rate soon rose dramatically. What was surprising was that years after this pent-up demand for marriage and children should have been satisfied, the birth and marriage rates remained high.” 8.
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| According to an 1948 article in Science News-Letter, Met Life Insurance Company had predicted that there would not be much of a war boom in marriages during the Korean War, because there simply were "not very many spinsters and bachelors left in the country." More than 2/3 of the population age 15 and over was already married. "The number of married people in the United States, estimated at almost 75 million, is now at an all time high." 9.
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| Also in 1948, an essayist wrote in Parents' Magazine: “Not only do more of our young people marry– they marry much earlier than anywhere else in the western world. Half of our men are married before they are 24 years old, and half of our women before they are 22. Over three-fourths of our men and women are married by the time they are 30 years old. By way of contrast, in Ireland only one-third of the 30-year-old men and just over half of the women of that age are married.” 10.
1956
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| The year U.S. women were getting married the youngest, from 1890 to 2003. In 1956, the median age for a woman's first marriage was just 20.1 years old – almost two years younger than the women's median age of marriage in 1890. 11.
1956 - 1959
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| The years U.S. men were getting married the youngest, from 1890 to 2003. From 1955 to 1959, the age hovered between 22.5 and 22.6 – about 3.5 years younger than the men in 1890. 12.
Almost half
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| According to 1956 Census estimates, of the women in the U.S. who would get married at some point in their lives, almost half of them would have been married before they were 20. 13.
And it was actually the 1960s when couples got married at the youngest –
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| On average, couples in the U.S. got married earlier in 1960 than they did in 1950. 14.
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| In 1961, Science News Letter reported, “Brides and Bridegrooms in the United States are younger and closer in age at first marriage than those in any other urban-industrialized country in the world. . . . Men are now marrying about three years earlier and women two years earlier than at the turn of this century. The 1890 census showed that half the bridegrooms were under 26 and half the brides were under 22. The U.S. has one of the highest marriage rates among Western industrial nations . . . .” 15.
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| “It is the fathers of the baby boomers, the men born between the early 1920s and World War II, whose behavior is problematic. To say that in the 1970s and 1980s men were ‘postponing’ marriage is justifiable only if the unusual decade of the 1950s is chosen as the frame of reference.” – sociologist Andrew Cherlin. 16.
"Ring by spring or your money back" –
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| “. . . getting married within weeks of graduation was a symbol of success for many college-educated women in the 1950s and early 1960s. . . in a generation in which half of all women married before age 21.” 17.
More than 30 percent
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| of American women graduating from 1900-1919 who were unmarried by 50, a rate four times that for women who had not attended college. Men had about the same marriage rate, whether or not they had attended college. 18.
More than 30 percent
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| of American women graduating college from 1900-1919 were unmarried by 50, a rate four times that for women who had not attended college. Men had about the same marriage rate, whether or not they had attended college. 19.
15-20 percent
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| of American women graduating from college in 1920-1945 were unmarried by 50. 20.
Eight percent
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| of American women graduating from college in 1946-1965 were unmarried by 50. 21.
12 percent
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| of American women graduating from college in 1966-1979 were unmarried by 50. 22.
36 percent
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| of U.S. women in 1970, ages 20 to 24 who had not married. 12 percent of women 25 to 29 had not married. 23.
69 percent
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| of U.S. women ages 20-24 in 2000 who had not married. 38 percent of women 25-29 still had not married. 24.
22 percent
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| of U.S. women 30 to 34 were never married in 2000. That is also about triple the percent of never-married women in that age group in 1970. 25.
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| “Since World War II, then, a historical difference between blacks and whites in marriage timing has been turned on its head: blacks used to marry earlier than whites, but now they marry later.” 26.
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| “In the nineteenth century. . . and throughout the first half of the twentieth century, blacks tended to marry at a younger age than did whites. Between 1940 and 1950, however, the average age at which whites married began to decrease, and by mid-century there was little difference between the two groups.” Then, the percentage of single white women kept falling, since they kept getting married earlier and earlier. But for nonwhites, the percentage of nonwhite women who were single began to rise, and has continued to rise ever since. 27.
23
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| according to a study, the median age for men in Mexico who migrate to the U.S., which is a year earlier than the median age for non-migrating men. 75 percent of migrating men are married by 27, which is almost two years earlier than non-migrating men. And only five percent of migrating men don’t marry, compared to 11 percent of non-migrating men. 28.
24
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| the median age at marriage for men in Mexico, which "has remained virtually unchanged . . . since the early 1940s. The stability in marriage reflects both the central economic role the family plays in providing individuals with a network of support and exchange in a context of heightened economic insecurity and the prevalent societal ideology that portrays marriage as an important social objective." 29.
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| In Mexico, early marriage can threaten completion of job training or experimentation, and educational attainment – the primary mechanism for upward mobility. 30.
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| In Mexico, women’s employment doesn't delay marriage; instead, their income allows men to get married earlier, because they don't have to earn as much before getting married. 31.
“Ahora sí te puedes casar.”
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| The average age at first marriage for women under the age of 50 in Western Europe in 2000. 33.
27-28 years for men, 25-26 years for women
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| The average age at first marriage in Western Europe in the 17th Century. 34.
25-27 years old
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| The average for marriage in the Netherlands in the 1500s-1600s. 35.
22-23 years old
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| The mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s. 36.
About 24 years old
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| The mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe in 2000. 37.
Moldova and Azerbaijan –
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| The only two countries of Central and Eastern Europe where the the mean age at first marriage decreased from 1990 to 2000. 38.
Everywhere else –
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| In all but Moldova and Azerbaijan, the mean age at first marriage in Central and Eastern Europe increased from 1990 to 2000. The age went up as much as three years in a number of these countries. 39.
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| In North America and in Western Europe, "First marriage continued to be postponed and so did age at first birth. More young people left the parental home to live some time on their own before cohabiting or marrying. This resulted in an increasing number of single person households of young adults." 40.
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| "In Spain, for example, the substantial increase since 1977 in the age at which children leave their parental households has been strictly paralleled by the increase in the age at marriage, with both indicators situated today at extremely high levels. In the United States, England, Denmark, and the Netherlands, on the contrary, leaving home long before marriage has tended to be normative behavior." 41.
casada casa quiere
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| (trans: "the bride (or groom) demands a home."): "In societies of Mediterranean Europe, . . . marriage does not even enter the picture unless it is accompanied by the corresponding emancipation from the parental home and the formation of a new household. This entire process is aptly crystallized in the traditional Spanish aphorism casada casa quiere - "the bride (or groom) demands a home." . . . . In fact, an excellent indicator of the labor market and unquestionably the best one for the rate of family formation in southern Europe would be the incidence of first marriages among young adults. 42.
Too early to tell –
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| In Asia, it doesn't appear to be that people are choosing to remain permanently single. Instead, they are just delaying marriage. Men are typically perceived as being the breadwinners in the families, and they appear to be responding to this pressure by securing their financial situation – by finishing their educations, completing job training, finding secure jobs – before getting married. And all that is keeping them busy until their mid-thirties. Women, on the other hand, are traditionally thought of, first and foremost, as being responsible for the home and children. And they seem to be holding off marriage because they want a period where they can enjoy employment – before fulfilling the personal and social – but more constrained – goal of marriage. But by 30 and later, the majority of men and women are married. 44.
9.9 percent
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| of Japanese men aged 30 to 34 were unmarried in 1960. 45.
42.9 percent
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| of Japanese men aged 30 to 34 were unmarried in 2000. 46.
18.57 –
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| of average age of a first marriage for a Chinese woman in 1949. 47.
24.02 years –
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| average age of a first marriage for a Chinese woman in 1996. 48.
27
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| Mean age of at marriage for a Japanese woman at the end of the 20th Century. 49.
30
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| Mean age of at marriage for a Japanese man at the end of the 20th Century. 50.
18.5 years old
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| the mean age at first marriage for women in Sri Lanka in 1901. 51.
24.4 years old
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| the mean age at first marriage for women in Sri Lanka in 1981. 52.
0.8 percent
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| of Taiwanese women in their 30s who had never married in 1905. 53.
11.6 percent
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| of Taiwanese women in their 30s who had never married in 2000. 54.
0.5 percent
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| of women aged 30 to 34 in South Korea were not married in 1960. 55.
10.7 percent
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| of women aged 30 to 34 in South Korea were not married in 2000. That's a more than a twenty-fold increase in just 30 years. 56.
4.6 percent
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| of women aged 20 to 44 in South Korea were not married in 1970. 57.
18.5 percent
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| of women aged 20 to 44 in South Korea were not married in 1970. 58.
21.0 years
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| The median age for a woman's first marriage in Australia, in 1974. 59.
26.0 years
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| The median age for a woman's first marriage in Australia, in 1998. 60.
23.5 years
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| The median age for a man's first marriage in Australia, in 1974. 61.
28.0 years
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| The median age for a woman's first marriage in Australia, in 1998. 62.
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| "A new phenomenon of remaining unmarried is appearing in Gulf societies; however remaining single is not restricted to females, it involves males as well. The decision to remain single is not because women can’t find husbands or men can’t afford to marry. It reflects a desire to delay the “marriage project” by males or females until they realize their personal aspirations, such as obtaining the highest levels of education or mastering a certain profession or occupation. Some people may even be too busy with other activities that result in delaying marriage. Gulf societies are suffering from a “spinsterhood crisis”, especially among well-educated middle class people, and among those who occupy highranking jobs. Such persons, especially females, are often very busy in realizing their aspirations that they delay marriage." 64.
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| Many men in Lesotho are marrying late, waiting until they are at least 30 years old, because they can't afford the bride wealth when they are younger. 65.
Six years later
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| In urban Nigeria, average age at marriage for women with advanced education is six years higher than that for women without any education (23.8 and 17.4, respectively). 66.
95-100 percent
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| of men and women in North Africa / Arab societies who are 45 years old and older have been married. 67.
25 years old
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| The average singulate mean age at marriage for women in Jordan, Bahrain and Tunisia. 68.
17 years old
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| The average age at marriage for a woman in Saudi Arabia. 69.
20.1 years old
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| The average age at marriage for a woman in Kuwait. 70.
Five percent
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| of women in Kuwait were still single by the age of 29 in 1965. 71.
23 percent
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| of women in Kuwait were still single by the age of 29 in 2000. 72.
_____________________________________________________________________________
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| * Walter Lionel George, “The Break-up of the Family,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, pp. 249-59 (July 1916), p. 256.
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| 6. Tallese Johnson and Jane Dye, Tables from Indicators of Marriage and Fertility in the United States from the American Community Survey: 2000 to 2003, Population Bureau, Division U.S. Census Bureau, citing American Community Survey 2002-2003, Census Supplementary Survey 2000-2001 (May 2005) Archived at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/fertility/mar-fert-slides.html
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| 7. Source of data: ________, Table MS-2, "Estimated Median Age at First Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to Present," U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC (Internet release: September 15, 2004). Archived at: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabMS-2.pdf See also Rose M. Kreider, Marital Status: 2000, Census 2000 Brief, C2KBR-30. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC (2003), p. 10 (citation omitted). Archived at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-30.pdf and Paul C. Glick, "The Life Cycle of the Family," Marriage and Family Living, National Council on Family Relations, Vol. 17., No. 1, pp. 3-9 (February 1955), p. 4. Archived at: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0885-7059%28195502%2917%3A1%3c3%3atlcotp%3e2.0.co%3b2-q
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| 9. TK Science News-Letter, p. 121 (Aug. 19, 1950)
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| 10. Louis I. Dublin, “Look at the Bright Side of Marriage: Some Facts and Figures Concerning American Family Life,” Parents' Magazine, Vol. 23, pp. 11, 68-70 (December 1948), p. 22.
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| 11. ________, Table MS-2, "Estimated Median Age at First Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to Present," U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC (Internet release: September 15, 2004). Archived at: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabMS-2.pdf See also Rose M. Kreider, Marital Status: 2000, Census 2000 Brief, C2KBR-30. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC (2003), p. 10 (citation omitted). Archived at: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-30.pdf
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| 15. ________, "Earlier U.S. Marriages," Science News-Letter, p. 383 (June 17, 1961).
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