The proportion of adults who are married has plunged to a record low as more people decide to live together now and wed later, reflecting decades of evolving attitudes about the role of marriage in society.
Fifty-one percent of all adults who are 18 and older are married, placing them on the brink of becoming a minority, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census statistics to be released today. That represents a steep drop from 57 percent who were married in 2000.
The statistics offer a snapshot in time and do not mean the unmarried will remain that way. They are a byproduct of a steady increase in the median age when people first marry, now at an all- time high of 26 for women and almost 29 for men.
“I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to get married someday,” said Kate Shorr, 30, a lawyer and lobbyist who until recently wrote a blog about her social life in Washington, A Single Girl Doing Single Things.
The marriage patterns are a striking departure from the middle of the 20th century, when the percentage of adults who never wed was in the low single digits. In 1960, for example, when most baby boomers were children, 72 percent of all adults were married. The median age for brides was barely 20, and the grooms were just a couple of years older.
“In the 1950s, if you weren’t married, people thought you were mentally ill,” said Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist who studies families. “Marriage was mandatory. Now, it’s culturally optional.”
The decline in marriage rates has affected people in every age and ethnic group, but it has been steepest among the young.
A Pew survey last year determined that more than four in 10 Americans younger than 30 consider marriage passe.
“They see it as an obsolete social environment,” said D’Vera Cohn, a Pew researcher who co-wrote the analysis.
The slide has worsened with the economy. Rose Kreider, a Census Bureau demographer, noted last year that 7.5 million couples were living together without being married, a 13 percent jump in one year. Many had a partner who had lost a job, or they could not afford to maintain two homes.
Most college graduates will marry, eventually. Nearly two in every three college graduates are married, compared with fewer than half with only a high school education.
“They’re pulling in two incomes, marrying and doing pretty well,” Cherlin said. “People without college educations are having a harder time finding jobs, and they’re reluctant to marry.”
