{"id":498,"date":"2020-10-21T12:59:46","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T12:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=498"},"modified":"2020-10-21T12:59:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T12:59:46","slug":"millennials-are-not-getting-married","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/21\/millennials-are-not-getting-married\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennials are not getting married"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In 2015 I wrote a paper called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/conference.scipy.org\/proceedings\/scipy2015\/allen_downey.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Will Millennials Ever Get Married?<\/a>&#8221; where I used data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to estimate the age at first marriage for women in the U.S, broken down by decade of birth. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I found that women born in the 1980s and 90s were getting married later than previous cohorts, and I generated projections that suggest they are on track to stay unmarried at substantially higher rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are the results from that paper, based on 58 488 women surveyed between 1983 to 2015:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-510\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-1024x683.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-1536x1024.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3-405x270.png 405w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-3.png 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Percentage of women ever married, based on data up to 2015.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Each line represents a cohort grouped by decade of birth.  For example, the top line represents women born in the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The colored segments show the fraction of women who had ever been married as a function of age.  For example, among women born in the 1940s, 82% had been married by age 25.  Among women born in the 1980s, only 41% had been married by the same age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gray lines show projections I generated by assuming that going forward each cohort would be subject to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Survival_analysis#Hazard_function_and_cumulative_hazard_function\">hazard function<\/a> of the previous cohort. This method is likely to overestimate marriage rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These results show two trends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Each cohort is getting married later than the previous cohort.<\/li><li>The fraction of women who never marry is increasing from one cohort to the next.  <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New data<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released a\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/nsfg\/nsfg_2017_2019_puf.htm\" target=\"_blank\">new batch of data from surveys conducted in 2017-2019<\/a>. \u00a0So we can compare the predictions from 2015 with the new data, and generate updated predictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following figure shows the predictions from the previous figure, which are based on data up to 2015, compared to the new curves based on data up to 2019, which includes 70 183 respondents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-511\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-1024x683.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-1536x1024.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4-405x270.png 405w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage4-4.png 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Percentage of women ever married, based on data up to 2019, <br>compared to predictions based on data up to 2015.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For women born in the 1980s, the fraction who have married is almost exactly as predicted.  For women born in the 1990s, it is substantially lower.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New projections<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The following figure shows projections based on data up to 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-1024x683.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-1536x1024.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4-405x270.png 405w, https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/marriage5-4.png 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>Percentage of women ever married, based on data up to 2019,<br>with predictions based on data up to 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The vertical dashed lines show the ages where we have the last reliable estimate for each cohort.  The following table summarizes the results at age 28:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-subtle-light-gray-background-color has-background\"><thead><tr><th>Decade of birth<\/th><th>1940s<\/th><th>1950s<\/th><th>1960s<\/th><th>1970s<\/th><th>1980s<\/th><th>1990s<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>% married <br>before age 28<\/td><td>87%<\/td><td>80%<\/td><td>70%<\/td><td>63%<\/td><td>55%<\/td><td>31%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><figcaption>Percentage of women married by age 28, grouped by decade of birth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The percentage of women married by age 28 has dropped quickly from each cohort to the next, by about 11 percentage points per decade.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following table shows the same percentage at age 38; the last value, for women born in the 1990s, is a projection based on the data we have so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-subtle-light-gray-background-color has-background\"><thead><tr><th>Decade of birth<\/th><th>1940s<\/th><th>1950s<\/th><th>1960s<\/th><th>1970s<\/th><th>1980s<\/th><th>1990s<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>% married <br>before age 38<\/td><td>92%<\/td><td>88%<\/td><td>85%<\/td><td>80%<\/td><td>68%<\/td><td><em>51%<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><figcaption>Percentage of women married by age 38, grouped by decade of birth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on current trends, we expect barely half of women born in the 1990s to be married before age 38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, here are the percentages of women married by age 48; the last two values are projections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table class=\"has-subtle-light-gray-background-color has-background\"><thead><tr><th>Decade of birth<\/th><th>1940s<\/th><th>1950s<\/th><th>1960s<\/th><th>1970s<\/th><th>1980s<\/th><th>1990s<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>% married <br>before age 48<\/td><td>>93%<\/td><td>>90%<\/td><td>88%<\/td><td>83%<\/td><td><em>72%<\/em><\/td><td><em>58%<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><figcaption>Percentage of women married by age 48, grouped by decade of birth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on current trends, we expect women born in the 1980s and 1990s to remain unmarried at rates substantially higher than previous generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Projections like these are based on the assumption that the future will be like the past, but of course, things change.  In particular:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>These data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. Marriage rates in 2020 will probably be lower than predicted, and the effect could continue into 2021 or beyond.<\/li><li>However, as economic conditions improve in the future, marriage rates might increase.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll find out when we get the next batch of data in October 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/AllenDowney\/MarriageNSFG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The code I used for this analysis is in this GitHub repository<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2015 I wrote a paper called &#8220;Will Millennials Ever Get Married?&#8221; where I used data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to estimate the age at first marriage for women in the U.S, broken down by decade of birth. \u00a0 I found that women born in the 1980s and 90s were getting married later than previous cohorts, and I generated projections that suggest they are on track to stay unmarried at substantially higher rates. Here are the&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/21\/millennials-are-not-getting-married\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,79,7],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-marriage","tag-millennials","tag-survival-analysis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Millennials are not getting married - Probably Overthinking It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/21\/millennials-are-not-getting-married\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Millennials are not getting married - Probably Overthinking It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In 2015 I wrote a paper called &#8220;Will Millennials Ever Get Married?&#8221; where I used data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to estimate the age at first marriage for women in the U.S, broken down by decade of birth. \u00a0 I found that women born in the 1980s and 90s were getting married later than previous cohorts, and I generated projections that suggest they are on track to stay unmarried at substantially higher rates. 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Here are the... 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I've worked on several studies using data from the NSFG, so it's time to do some updates! In 2015 I gave a talk at SciPy called \"Will Millennials Ever Get Married\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screenshot-at-2019-02-06-10-02-10.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screenshot-at-2019-02-06-10-02-10.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screenshot-at-2019-02-06-10-02-10.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screenshot-at-2019-02-06-10-02-10.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Screenshot-at-2019-02-06-10-02-10.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":179,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/21\/are-men-getting-married-later-or-never-both\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":1},"title":"Are men getting married later or never?  Both.","author":"AllenDowney","date":"February 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I wrote about marriage patterns for women in the U.S. Now let's see what's happening with men. Again, I'm working with data from the National Survey of Family Growth, which surveyed 29,192 men in the U.S. between 2002 and 2017. I used Kaplan\u2013Meier estimation to compute \"survival\" curves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"marriage\"","block_context":{"text":"marriage","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/marriage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/marriage8.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":771,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/31\/support-for-gun-control-is-still-declining\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":2},"title":"Support for Gun Control is Still Declining","author":"AllenDowney","date":"August 31, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"In 2019 I presented a talk at SciPy where I showed that support for gun control has been declining in the U.S. since about 1999. 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My analysis uses data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Today they released the most recent data, from surveys conducted\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/marriage_female23.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1233,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/18\/the-gender-gap-in-political-beliefs-is-small\/","url_meta":{"origin":498,"position":4},"title":"The Gender Gap in Political Beliefs Is Small","author":"AllenDowney","date":"February 18, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In previous articles (here, here, and here) I've looked at evidence of a gender gap in political alignment (liberal or conservative), party affiliation (Democrat or Republican), and policy preferences. 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Comparing the number of Atheists, Agnostics, and \"Nothing in Particular\" between 2020 and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}