Marriage is a union between two partners who vow to live together lifelong. Unfortunately, due to various issues, marriages tend to break down, leading to a divorce.
Marriages followed by divorces have become an inevitable part of modern life. A look at the statistics for marriages and divorces reveals that both of these are declining in the US.
Statistics related to marriage reveal that there were 61.24 million married couples in the United States (as on end of 2018). In 2011, this number stood at 58.04 million.
A little over half of the US population over 18 years of age are married. This is lesser compared to previous year’s. Also, since 1990, there has been an eight percent decline in the marriage rate.
One of the reasons for this is that most people get married very late. Statistics show that the average age of marriage in men is 30 years and 28 for women. Another significant fact is that there were around 7% of Americans who were living together without being officially married.
The highest percentage of married people are in Utah (56.1%) and the lowest in Louisiana (43.6%).
When we look at the divorce statistics, we find that the divorce rate in the US is 2.9 per 1000 people. This is as per the 2017 data from American Community Survey. A study showed that the divorce rate has declined in a big way. From 2018 to 2016, it has fallen by 18%, which is highly significant.
Since marriage rates have also declined, the number of divorces also fallen. In 2009, 4 out of 1000 people were getting divorced. This has dropped to 2.9 per 1000 people. Nevada is the state that has the highest divorce rate with 4.5 per 1000 people. The lowest divorce rate occurs in Louisiana with a rate of 1.9 per 1000.
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