There's a 45% to 60% decline in the marriage rate in the U.S. since the 1950s - and it's not even in the news?!!

 so it's almost a 50% decline in the marriage rate from the 1950s. That's huge news

  Married couples represent roughly 47% of all U.S. households today...In 1950, approximately 79% to 87% of U.S. households or family households consisted of married couples. Today? It's less than 50%

 A drop from 85% to 47% is a 44.71% percentage decline.

 The U.S. marriage rate has actually declined by roughly 60% since its peak/start of the long decline in the 1970s, and the drop from the mid-20th century is even steeper depending on the specific metric used (for instance, married-couple households dropped from nearly 79% in 1949 to about 47% today

 About 1 in 4 adults in their 40s has never married, quadrupling the rate seen in 1980

 

Economic Shifts: Greater financial independence for women, higher educational attainment, and changing career priorities in early adulthood have pushed marriage timelines back. [1, 2]

Cultural Norms: Societal decoupling of sex and childbearing from formal marriage, alongside rising material expectations (like homeownership) before tying the knot, have changed how people approach lifelong partnerships

 College-educated women initiate approximately 90% of divorces...Women initiate about 69% to 70% of all general divorces. Wow proves my point!! 

 The 90% statistic: Research shows that when looking strictly at marriages involving college-educated women, the proportion of wives who file for or initiate the divorce rises to roughly 90%.

 Rising costs for housing, childcare, and daily life mean many do not feel financially secure enough for marriage or family until their mid-30s

 ok but the marriage rate at the height of the Great Depression (7.1 out of 1000) was higher than it is today (6.1 out of 1000)!! What does that tell us about the economy? hahaha.

In 2024, US adults were less likely to be married than at almost any point since the Census Bureau began tracking marital status in 1940.

Great Depression Low (1932): The U.S. marriage rate bottomed out at 7.9 per 1,000 people. During this period of extreme economic hardship, many couples delayed weddings due to unemployment and financial insecurity. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Modern Rate: The provisional CDC FastStats data shows the U.S. marriage rate sits at 6.1 per 1,000 people. [1, 2]

While economic anxiety drove the temporary dip in the 1930s, the current lower rate reflects permanent, decades-long cultural shifts, including a higher median age for first marriages and the widespread rise of unmarried cohabitation...

 Make up about 46.4% to 53% of the adult population depending on specific demographic tracking (down from roughly 58–59% in the late 1990s).

Cohabiting Adults: Make up about 9.1% of all U.S. adults (up significantly from 3.7% in 1996).

 Prior to Marriage: Approximately 80% of recent marriages were preceded by the couple living together first