Just when you thought proposal season was over, it’s Valentine’s Day. This year there will be about 220,000 proposals on Feb. 14. That means about 10% of all annual engagements in the U.S. will take place during this 24-hour period.
In spite of these numbers, the marriage rate in America is falling and has been for some time. Marriage rates are at their lowest in history. According to Pew Research, fewer adults over the age of 25 are married than ever before. Those who do intend to marry are delaying the act; the average age of marriage in the U.S. is now 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 20 and 23 respectively in 1960.
In popular media coverage, the retreat in marriage tends to focus on Millennials, minorities and lower-income workers as the backbone of this phenomenon. Pew reported that 25% of Millennials never intend to get married, African-American women are three times more likely to never marry than white women, while low-income individuals are less likely to be married even though they tend to put high value on the institution.
“Part of the story here, of course, is economic. It’s precisely among lower-income and working-class people and Millennials where job prospects are worse, where unemployment is higher and where underemployment is higher,” says Brad Wilcox, director of The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. When people – particularly men – don’t have a job or a decent salary, they are statistically less likely to get and stay married.
The marriage advantage
The American economy, some would argue, is set up to best serve married couples. A married couple can give and receive tax-free gifts; Medicare, Social Security, disability and veteran’s benefits all extend to a spouse. And couple’s discounts are available for auto, healthcare and homeowner’s insurance.
There is also a noted “marriage premium” on married men’s salaries—depending on demographics married men tend to make 10% to 50% more money each year than their single counterparts.
“We found that married men tend to make $16,000 more each year than their similar single peers,” says Wicox, who is also a visiting scholar at American Enterprise Institute. Women, he says, no longer bear a marriage penalty. “So you put two married folks together and you’re seeing more income for them both as individuals and as a family.”
This makes a big impact on the macro level. About a third of the growth in income inequality since the 1970s can be attributed to the retreat from marriage, says Wilcox. One-third of the decline in men’s labor force participation over the same period can also be attributed to the decline. “We’d see median household incomes about 40% higher if we had marriage rates at the 1980 levels,” he says. Wilcox sustains that the largest reason for income inequality is single parenthood, between 1980 and 2012 the median family income for married couples rose 30% while unmarried incomes rose by 14%.
Marriage seemingly makes sense economically, so then the question is: Why do rates remain so low?
Fear of divorce is one reason that Americans are delaying marriage, according to Wilcox. The rising divorce rate is something Americans have internalized as truth but it’s actually a myth. Divorce rates have actually been declining in the U.S. since 1980.
Some – quite sensibly – want to wait until they’re financially secure to tie the knot.
And there’s the question of fitting into larger society. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that married couples were happier and more satisfied with their lives than singles. “We live in a culture that’s very couple-based,” says psychotherapist Robi Ludwig. “So people who are not part of a culture and feel connected to a significant other often feel lonely or can feel out of sync in a way that may not produce feelings of happiness.” Marriage, she says, makes sense in terms of how our culture works and how we stay connected to one another.
They do want to get married… maybe
Lauren Kay, founder and CEO of popular Millennial dating site, The Dating Ring, says that young people do want to get married, just not right now. “I still think that many Millennials really value marriage and are constantly thinking about it, they’re just thinking about it in terms of getting married later and staying in their marriage,” she says.
Ludwig suggests this might be because young people are experiencing themselves as “younger for longer.” They don’t think of themselves as adults, even in their late 20s.
The experience of imagining oneself as a young person even as you get on in years isn’t a new one. Gertrude Stein first described the feeling and attributed it as a distinctly American trait in her novel “The Making of Americans,” published in 1925. The difference is that young people of previous generations didn’t reject typical markers of adulthood like getting married, having a family and buying a house the way today’s young people do.
Kay finds that those who join her dating site express interest in marrying in their 30s, not their 20s. They see marriage as the capstone, not the cornerstone of their younger years. “We’re constantly seeing that people in their 20s are open to everything, but almost everyone who joins our site wants to get married eventually. I think a lot of people are conflating Millennials with the larger marriage trends that we see tied to economic status.”
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