# US Married Households -- Actual Data



## sidney2718 (Nov 2, 2013)

I don't know if this is the right place to post this or not. If it isn't, I apologize in advance.

We in CWI often talk about the high rate of divorce, much of which is due to infidelity. It is hard finding accurate figures for that. But there is a related category where the data is good. And that is the fraction of households in the US belonging to married couples.

The data comes from the decennial census and covers ALL the households in the US. The last data, starting with 2006, is estimated.

I took the data from today's NYTimes. The story is on line at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/f...-reveal-economic-fault-lines.html?ref=fashion 

Date Percent Married Households

1920 65.0
1930 65.8
1940 66.1
1950 70.3
1960 72.2
1970 68.6
1980 62.3
1990 58.5
2000 57.4
------- ------
2006 53.2
2007 53.1
2008 52.5
2009 51.9
2010 51.4
2011 50.8
2012 50.5

It is clear from the data that the big surge in married families came in 1950 to 1960. This was most likely due to the post World War II "boom" which increased the prosperity of all folks in the US. The rate has done nothing but fall since.

However the rate prior to World War II isn't that great. The "good old days" weren't.

Sorry about how the table columns get "squished" by the forum processor but it should be simple to follow even so.


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## lifeistooshort (Mar 17, 2013)

Looks like a basic annual trend of about -1% per year. A lot of details would be needed here to draw conclusions.....this is my kind of thing and what I spend a good chunk of my days going. Not looking at marriage trends of course but looking at various kinds of trends.


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## Dogbert (Jan 10, 2015)

There will never be a shortage of suckers.


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## Wolfman1968 (Jun 9, 2011)

sidney2718 said:


> I don't know if this is the right place to post this or not. If it isn't, I apologize in advance.
> 
> We in CWI often talk about the high rate of divorce, much of which is due to infidelity. It is hard finding accurate figures for that. But there is a related category where the data is good. And that is the fraction of households in the US belonging to married couples.
> 
> ...



Actually, I don't find this data to be useful at all, and the accompanying article with the NY Times which builds upon this data shows a horrible lack of understanding of population statistics.

You cannot compare raw married household rates from the 1920s to the 1950s through now and try to comment on any societal meaning.

There are many diffenences between the pre-WWII data and immediately post-WWII data and now.

The mortality rates/lifespans were higher in the 1920s/1930/1940s. So many of these unmarried household were widowed (WWI, Spanish Flu epidemic, no antibiotics, shorter lifespans, etc.) as opposed to now; that doesn't mean marriage was more or less valued then. Also, the age of marriage for women dropped---if I remember, it was at its lowest in the 1950s--and it was higher in the depression due to economic reasons. 

The median age of the populations are different. The median age is much higher now, so that you are comparing a population of young people and old people.

This is more than just comparing apples and oranges. This is comparing apples and zebras. I don't see how the NY Times can make any assumptions about this.


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## Melvynman (Mar 19, 2014)

The decline started in the 1950's because women got the rights to divorce in all 50 states.


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