Thelife
- The average marriage age for Americans has increased over time, finds US Census Bureau data.
- In 1962, 90% of 30-year-olds had been married at least once. By 2018, only 54% of 30-year-olds had been married.
Valentine's Day is coming up, and couples are celebrating their love for each other. Many of those couples, however, may not be overly eager to tie the knot: Americans aren't getting married at young ages as often as they used to.
We looked at data from the US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, a survey of US households that investigates various economic and social aspects of people's lives. In particular, we used the individual-level Public Use Microdata Sample assembled by the Minnesota Population Center.
Read more: Here's how much male and female American workers earn at every age
Using this data, we were able to estimate the number of people who identified as being married, separated, divorced, or widowed at each year of age. We estimated the percentage of people who had been married at least once in 1962, 1980, 2000, and 2017.
In 1962, half of 21-year-olds and 90% of 30-year-olds had been married at least once. In 2018, only 8.8% of 21-year-olds and 54.0% of 30-year-olds had been married.
Here's the likelihood that a person has been married at least once at some point in his or her life for every year of age over the past few decades:
- Read more about economics and demographics in the US:
- These 6 maps show how the economies of all 50 US states and DC are doing
- Here's the town in every state with the most single people
- What people at every income level from $21,000 to $266,000 will have to pay in taxes this year
- Here's the town in every state with the most millennials