The Family - Marriage In The 20th Century

For people making a living in the "wedding business" — wedding planners, banquet halls, and the like — business has been good. The later half of the 20th century saw a lot of weddings. The peak year was 1984 when 2,477,000 couples were united in holy matrimony. The rate of marriage per thousand population that year was 10.5, just over the century average of 10.14. The bars on this chart show rates of marriage and divorce per thousand population, a measure that allows for greater trend analysis as it corrects for changes in population.

There has been a slight decline in the rate at which we married during the 20th century. We started the century with a rate of 9.3 and ended it with a rate of 8.7; both rates are below the century average. Notable peaks occurred in post-war eras. The sharpest of these was immediately following World War II when our rate of marriage per thousand population shot up to 16.4, 162% of the century average. It was this peak in marriages that lead directly to the Baby Boom and the demographic shock wave that the Boom has been to all aspects of social life in the second half of the century.

A chart showing annual marriage figures and population data only can be useful in identifying some of the dynamics behind the decline in the marriage rate. This chart presents the annual marriage rate per thousand population in the form of bars and a line for the percentage of the population made up of those in the "prime" marriage years, between the ages of 20 and 34. The patterns produced by the two data series are remarkably similar, suggesting that the rate at which we marry is directly linked with the age demographic of our society. Worth noting is the fact that the marriage rate listed here includes not only first marriages but second, third, fourth, and, in the case Elizabeth Taylor, eighth marriages too. Which leads us to divorce.

The rate of divorce, which can be seen on the main graph, has a similar pattern to that of marriage. The divorce rate rose throughout the first four-fifths of the century, peaking in 1979 and 1981 and declining thereafter. The rate of divorce shows less fluctuation, the peaks being lower and the valleys shallower but the overall pattern is very similar to that produced by the marriage rate. The century started with many fewer divorces annually than marriages. It ended with these two rates having come much closer together. In the year 2000, the rate of marriage was 8.7 per thousand population and the rate of divorce was 4.1, almost half that of marriage⁵.

Marriage has not gone out of style. We are still as likely to marry in a lifetime as we were a century ago, the odds being 9 to 1 in favor of a person marrying by middle age. However, we are marrying later in life and although the institution of marriage seems to have a lasting appeal the marriages themselves are not lasting as long.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control. National Center for Health Statistics. Fast Stats A to Z Marriage. Online. Available: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage.htm; National Vital Statistics Report. August 22, 2001. Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for January-December 2000; National Vital Statistics Report. July 6, 1999. Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 1998. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States 2001. 121^st ed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 2001, p. 59, table 68; U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Public Health Service. Vital and Health Statistics Series 21. No. 24. December 1973. Marriages, divorces, and rates: United States, 1867— 1967.