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(Trends Wide) — If you’ve made it to age 40 without getting married, you’re not alone, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
An analysis of 2021 US Census Bureau data revealed that a quarter of Americans in their 40s have never been married, the research center announced Wednesday.
According to the study, this is a “significant increase” from the 20% of people in their 40s who had not married in 2010.
The Pew report found that men in their 40s were more likely than women to have never married, and that black 40-year-olds were “far more likely” than their peers of other races to have never married.
It also found that people in their 40s with at least a bachelor’s degree were less likely to have never walked down the aisle than 40-somethings who had reached fewer educational milestones.
According to Pew, “one-third of people with a high school degree or less had never been married, compared with 26% of those with some college education and 18% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more.”
The results, which suggest a shift in Americans’ view of the importance of getting married, differ greatly from statistics published decades ago, in 1980, when only 6% of people in their 40s had never been married. reported Pew.
The research center conducted the analysis to look at how marriage rates among 40-year-olds in the US have changed from 1850 to 2021.
Their findings revealed a downward trend toward delaying marriage or giving it up altogether among people born during or after the 1960s, according to the report.
“In all previous generations of American adults, less than 1 in 5 adults had not attempted marriage by age 40,” Pew principal investigator Richard Fry said in an email to Trends Wide.
The new report focused on people in their 40s to reflect the fact that adults tend to “take stock of their lives at the start of a new decade of life,” Fry said.
“This is old-fashioned and changing, but fertility and marriage are somewhat related,” he said. “Some women may want to have children in the context of marriage. Since fertility declines after age 40, 40 is an appropriate age to document the results of marriage.”
About 1 in 4 people in their 40s who weren’t yet married in 2001 had put the dots together by the time they turned 60, Pew reported.
If the trend continues, the research center predicts that “a similar proportion” of never-married 40-year-olds will marry in the next few years.
“We’re in new territory, if you will, and we’re watching how today’s 40-somethings fare as they explore new avenues toward committed relationships,” Fry said.
A 2022 report from the National Project on Marriage at the University of Virginia found that the median age of first marriage increased over the past 50 years, “from 23 in 1970 to about 30 in 2021 for men, and 21 in 1970 to 28 in 2021 for women”.
But a later marriage may not necessarily mean a better one: 81% of husbands who married earlier said they were satisfied with their marriages, compared with 71% of those who married later, according to the report. The results were similar among women, though with a minor difference: 73% of those who married earlier were satisfied, compared with 70% of those who married later, according to the report.
