Research Report Fewer Marriages, More Divergence: Marriage Projections for Millennials to Age 40
Steven Martin, Nan Marie Astone, H. Elizabeth Peters
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Declining marriage rates suggest a growing fraction of millennials will remain unmarried through age 40. In this brief, we use data from the American Community Survey to estimate age-specific marriage rates and project the percentage of millennials who will marry by age 40 in different scenarios. We find that the percentage of millennials marrying by age 40 will fall lower than for any previous generation of Americans, even in a scenario where marriage rates recover considerably. Moreover, marriage patterns will continue to diverge by education and race, increasing the divides between mostly married haves and increasingly single "have-nots".
Research Areas Education Families Race and equity
Tags Higher education Family and household data Race, gender, class, and ethnicity Women and girls Men and boys Racial equity in education