Ryan, one factor you seem to omit is living together without marriage. I suspect if you add that option (asking people, are you married or cohabitating?) The gap between religions and non would close considerably. And because children seem to be one of the outcomes of interest, tracking marriage and children would prove helpful.
I do think this question is of interest: what public policies related to coupling and childbirth would encourage social stability and flourishing? That is what we are after, right? For instance, we could say that war discourages social stability and human flourishing while health care encourages social stability and human flourishing.
I've read quite a bit about attempts at national policy that tried to increase fertility rates. The short answer is that none of them really worked that well.
I can poke around on co-habitation a bit using different data. It's a hot debate in social science: do couples that like together before marriage have a higher likelihood of divorce? The problem is a lot of confounding variables. People often choose to cohabitate because they don't have the funds to live separately.
Fascinating! I echo a previous commenter in wondering how this would look if you had a way to control for co-habitation without marriage. Asking in part because I co-habited for nearly 20 years before marrying -- in large part because we couldn't legally marry until recently. Ours is a special case (most couples can marry), but I know a decent number who DON'T marry until they either want to have kids or they get old enough -- 30s, 40s, 50s -- to feel that the legal benefits of marriage as they age are worth dotting that i and crossing that t, so to speak.
In reading through this and thinking about other posts from the author I cannot help but wonder if economic class plays a role here. Could it be that people who are financially struggling and more likely to be nones is a factor in folks not getting married.
Yes, especially since finances are one reason that people say they are delaying marriage. I know people who view the normal order of operations to be: move in together, buy a house together, have children, get married. Sometimes those last two are switched around.
As always, your analysis is excellent. I’m curious if you’ve done anything similar for divorce rates? As a parent of two Zoomers just under 30 (both ironically married and atheist-plus 4 yr degrees), I find an overall attitude amongst their Gen Z friends, religious and nonreligious alike, that seeing such high divorce rates in their parents marriages (and all the rupture that has caused in their families) is a big reason they don’t want marriage for themselves.
So, the biggest surprise to me was that being black is the single biggest predictor of remaining unmarried. We're you able to dive further into that? Black men? Black women? Just wondering if one or the other or both was doing heavy lifting when it came to that prediction model.
The marriage rates by age 45 seem way too low to me. I recall that at least 75% of 45 year olds in the US have been married at least once by age 45. But based on this graph, around half of Americans have never married by 45. What am I missing?
What controls marriage these days is affordability. I grew up in an era that taught me I had to be able to afford a spouse, that financial expectations would be increased.
I'm not sure religion or politics can be the sole variables.
My granddaughter is getting married this fall after living with her fiancée for six years. She is 26 with a two year degree but the company she works for has been impressed enough that when she said she was taking another position they gave her $10,000 over what the other company was offering and promised to pay for her four year degree as long as she stayed with them.
Making over $100k per year has given her the confidence to get married now.
There's a puzzle I've seen before (not quite as relevant with ever married). At least until equal marriage came in, there should have been one (currently) married man for every married woman. But, IIRC, there have always been more self-reported married women than married men.
Sampling issues seem unlikely here. My wager would be that men are less likely to report their marriages when they are married-but-separated, but as for why I am not sure. Maybe there are social factors that make separation more embarrassing for men than for women?
Is it possible that women beyond the youngest ages are more likely to prefer a man who has already been married (divorced or widowed) and will choose from that pool rather than from never-married men, leaving a larger number of men in the never married category?
Your point about the correlation between declining religion and marriage is well made. I would throw in (1) political ideology: the growing division between young men and women, conservatives vs liberals; (2) poor physical fitness, obesity, sexual attractiveness, (3) psychoses: disorganized thinking and behavior, emotional disruption, low social skills. All of these issues are endemic in our society.
Ryan, you pulled from the article: "They point to studies which find that church-going couples have a divorce rate that is 50% lower than those who don’t go to a house of worship on a regular basis." However, your analysis seemed to be entirely on religious belonging, rather than religious attendance. I'd love to see a follow up that looked added religious behavior into the model. My prediction is that the marriage decline is due less to self-proclaimed 'nones' and more due to religious behavior.
I got this from an AI question, so not totally sure of it's accuracy but there is definitely something different going on with marriage in black culture.
"2024 data from Pew Research Center tabulations of Census ACS microdata found about 29% of Black women are currently married compared to 36% of Black men."
Ryan, one factor you seem to omit is living together without marriage. I suspect if you add that option (asking people, are you married or cohabitating?) The gap between religions and non would close considerably. And because children seem to be one of the outcomes of interest, tracking marriage and children would prove helpful.
I do think this question is of interest: what public policies related to coupling and childbirth would encourage social stability and flourishing? That is what we are after, right? For instance, we could say that war discourages social stability and human flourishing while health care encourages social stability and human flourishing.
I've read quite a bit about attempts at national policy that tried to increase fertility rates. The short answer is that none of them really worked that well.
I can poke around on co-habitation a bit using different data. It's a hot debate in social science: do couples that like together before marriage have a higher likelihood of divorce? The problem is a lot of confounding variables. People often choose to cohabitate because they don't have the funds to live separately.
Fascinating! I echo a previous commenter in wondering how this would look if you had a way to control for co-habitation without marriage. Asking in part because I co-habited for nearly 20 years before marrying -- in large part because we couldn't legally marry until recently. Ours is a special case (most couples can marry), but I know a decent number who DON'T marry until they either want to have kids or they get old enough -- 30s, 40s, 50s -- to feel that the legal benefits of marriage as they age are worth dotting that i and crossing that t, so to speak.
In reading through this and thinking about other posts from the author I cannot help but wonder if economic class plays a role here. Could it be that people who are financially struggling and more likely to be nones is a factor in folks not getting married.
Yes, especially since finances are one reason that people say they are delaying marriage. I know people who view the normal order of operations to be: move in together, buy a house together, have children, get married. Sometimes those last two are switched around.
As always, your analysis is excellent. I’m curious if you’ve done anything similar for divorce rates? As a parent of two Zoomers just under 30 (both ironically married and atheist-plus 4 yr degrees), I find an overall attitude amongst their Gen Z friends, religious and nonreligious alike, that seeing such high divorce rates in their parents marriages (and all the rupture that has caused in their families) is a big reason they don’t want marriage for themselves.
Divorce is harder to analyze because very few surveys ask: have you ever been divorced.
They do ask about your CURRENT marital status.
I think you can see the difficulty there.
So, the biggest surprise to me was that being black is the single biggest predictor of remaining unmarried. We're you able to dive further into that? Black men? Black women? Just wondering if one or the other or both was doing heavy lifting when it came to that prediction model.
The marriage rates by age 45 seem way too low to me. I recall that at least 75% of 45 year olds in the US have been married at least once by age 45. But based on this graph, around half of Americans have never married by 45. What am I missing?
What controls marriage these days is affordability. I grew up in an era that taught me I had to be able to afford a spouse, that financial expectations would be increased.
I'm not sure religion or politics can be the sole variables.
My granddaughter is getting married this fall after living with her fiancée for six years. She is 26 with a two year degree but the company she works for has been impressed enough that when she said she was taking another position they gave her $10,000 over what the other company was offering and promised to pay for her four year degree as long as she stayed with them.
Making over $100k per year has given her the confidence to get married now.
It's all about the money, honey! :)
There's a puzzle I've seen before (not quite as relevant with ever married). At least until equal marriage came in, there should have been one (currently) married man for every married woman. But, IIRC, there have always been more self-reported married women than married men.
Sampling issues seem unlikely here. My wager would be that men are less likely to report their marriages when they are married-but-separated, but as for why I am not sure. Maybe there are social factors that make separation more embarrassing for men than for women?
Is it possible that women beyond the youngest ages are more likely to prefer a man who has already been married (divorced or widowed) and will choose from that pool rather than from never-married men, leaving a larger number of men in the never married category?
Your point about the correlation between declining religion and marriage is well made. I would throw in (1) political ideology: the growing division between young men and women, conservatives vs liberals; (2) poor physical fitness, obesity, sexual attractiveness, (3) psychoses: disorganized thinking and behavior, emotional disruption, low social skills. All of these issues are endemic in our society.
Ryan, you pulled from the article: "They point to studies which find that church-going couples have a divorce rate that is 50% lower than those who don’t go to a house of worship on a regular basis." However, your analysis seemed to be entirely on religious belonging, rather than religious attendance. I'd love to see a follow up that looked added religious behavior into the model. My prediction is that the marriage decline is due less to self-proclaimed 'nones' and more due to religious behavior.
I got this from an AI question, so not totally sure of it's accuracy but there is definitely something different going on with marriage in black culture.
"2024 data from Pew Research Center tabulations of Census ACS microdata found about 29% of Black women are currently married compared to 36% of Black men."