A Multistate Analysis of United States Marriage, Divorce, and Fertility, 2005–10 and 2015–20: The Retreat from Marriage Continues

Augmented female marital status life tables are prepared and examined for the United States over the 2005–10 and 2015–20 intervals. The life tables span the ages of 15 to 50. No mortality is assumed over those ages, hence the tables only recognize the marital statuses of Never Married (S), Married (M), and Divorced (V). Fertility is added by recognizing parity states 0 through 5 in each marital state, yielding a model with 18 marital-parity states. Summary measures derived from those life tables show a clear continuation of the retreat from marriage. Between 2005–10 and 2015–20, the probability of marrying by age 50 fell from 80% to 70%, the average age at first marriage increased by 1.1 years, and the Total Fertility Rate dropped from 1.96 to 1.71. Divorce rates fell, but the age 15–50 ratio of divorces to marriages dropped by only 9%. The 2015–2020 rates indicate that nearly 20% of American women remain childless at age 50. Parity one was the modal parity, and a 0–2 child range appears to have replaced the 2–4 child range. Over the decade considered, the nonmarital proportion of all births increased to 41%. More than a fifth of all women had at least one child but never married by age 50. Despite those broad trends, the continuing retreat of marriage was not a rout. Some 70% of women do marry by age 50, and the strengths of a stable partnership remain strong. The future course of American fertility is unclear, but marriage may well strengthen as better ways are found to reconcile gender equality with the demands of childrearing.