Which of the Following Is Not a Major Trend in the Historical Changes in American Family Life?

Marriage, equally a social establishment, has been around for thousands of years.¹ With things that are thousands of years old, information technology'southward easy to assume that they can only alter slowly. Just developments since the middle of the 20th century show that this assumption is wrong: in many countries marriages are becoming less common, people are marrying afterwards, unmarried couples are increasingly choosing to alive together, and in many countries we are seeing a 'decoupling' of parenthood and marriage. Inside the last decades the institution of spousal relationship has inverse more than in thousands of years before.

Here we present the data behind these fast and widespread changes, and discuss some of the main drivers behind them.

Marriages are becoming less common

In many countries matrimony rates are declining

The proportion of people who are getting married is going down in many countries across the world.

The nautical chart here shows this trend for a selection of countries. Information technology combines data from multiple sources, including statistical state offices and reports from the UN, Eurostat and the OECD. You tin can change the choice of countries using the option Add country direct in the interactive chart.

Marriage rates in the U.s. over the last century

For the US nosotros have data on marriage rates going dorsum to the start of the 20th century. This lets us run across when the pass up started, and trace the influence of social and economic changes during the process.

• In 1920, shortly after the Outset World War, at that place were 12 marriages annually for every ane,000 people in the Usa. Marriages in the US and then were almost twice as mutual as today.
• In the 1930s, during the Smashing Low, the charge per unit fell sharply. In the 1930s marriages became once again more common and in 1946 – the year after the Second Earth State of war ended – marriages reached a height of 16.4 marriages per ane,000 people.
• Marriage rates fell once more in the 1950s so bounced dorsum in the 1960s.
• The long decline started in the 1970s. Since 1972, union rates in the Us accept fallen by almost l%, and are currently at the lowest point in recorded history.

How did marriage rates change around the world?

The chart also shows that in comparison to other rich countries, the US has had specially high historical matrimony rates. But in terms of changes over time, the trend looks similar for other rich countries. The Great britain and Commonwealth of australia, for example, accept also seen marriage rates declining for decades, and are currently at the lowest betoken in recorded history.

For not-rich countries the data is sparse, just available estimates from Latin America, Africa and Asia suggest that the pass up of marriages is not exclusive to rich countries. Over the period 1990 – 2010 there was a decline in union rates in the majority of countries effectually the world.

But there's still a lot of cantankerous-state variation around this general tendency, and in some countries changes are going in the opposite direction. In Mainland china, Russia and People's republic of bangladesh, for example, marriages are more than common today than a couple of decades ago.

In many countries there has been a large decline in marriages beyond cohorts

This nautical chart looks at the modify in marriages from a unlike bending and answers the question: How likely were people in different generations to be married by a given historic period?

In many rich countries at that place are statistical records going back several generations, assuasive us to estimate marriage rates by age and twelvemonth of nascency. The nautical chart here uses those records to give marriage rates by age and year of birth for 5 cohorts of men in England and Wales.

For case, yous can look at 30-year-olds, and see what percentage of them in each cohort was married. Of those men who were born in 1940, about 83% were married by age 30. Among those born in 1980 only most 25% were married by age 30.

The tendency is stark. English men in more recent cohorts are much less likely to have married, and that's true at all ages.

In that location are two causes for this: an increasing share of people in younger cohorts are non getting married; and younger cohorts are increasingly choosing to marry afterward in life. Nosotros explore this second betoken below.

Average age at wedlock

People are marrying later

In many countries, failing marriage rates take been accompanied past an increase in the age at which people are getting married. This is shown in the chart here, where we plot the boilerplate age of women at first marriage.ⁱⁱⁱ

The increase in the age at which people are getting married is stronger in richer countries, particularly in North America and Europe. In Sweden, for example, the average historic period of spousal relationship for women went up from 28 in 1990 to 34 years in 2017.

In Bangladesh and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the boilerplate historic period at marriage is low and has remained unchanged for several years. In Niger, where child wedlock is common, the average age at marriage for women has remained abiding, at 17 years, since the early 1990s. (NB. You discover kid spousal relationship data in our interactive nautical chart here ).

Just these countries are the exceptions. The age at which women marry is increasing in many countries in all regions, from Kingdom of norway to Japan to Chile.

More people marrying later means that a greater share of young people being single.

According to the British census of 1971 about 85% of women between the age of 25 and 29 were married, as this chart shows. By 2011 that figure had declined to 58%.

For older people the tendency is reversed – the share of older women who never got married is declining. In the 1971 demography the share of women threescore-64 who had ever been married was lower than it is for women in that age-bracket in the decades since.

You can create like charts for both men and women beyond all countries, using the United nations Globe Marriage Data site here. This lets you explore in more particular the distribution of marriages by age beyond fourth dimension, for both men and women.

There has been a 'decoupling' of parenthood and matrimony

An organization where 2 or more than people are not married merely live together is referred to as cohabitation. In recent decades cohabitation has become increasingly mutual around the world. In the US, for example, the United states of america Census Bureau estimates that the share of young adults between the age of 18 and 24 living with an single partner went up from 0.1% to nine.4% over the period 1968-2018; and according to a contempo survey from Pew Inquiry, today nearly Americans favor allowing unmarried couples to take the same legal rights as married couples.

The increment in cohabitation is the result of the two changes that we discussed above: fewer people are choosing to marry and those people who do get married tend to do so when they are older, and frequently live with their partner earlier getting married. In the UK, for example, 85% of people who get married cohabited showtime.^five

Long-run data on the share of people living in cohabitation beyond countries is non bachelor, but some related datapoints are: In detail, the proportion of births outside wedlock provide a relevant proxy measure, allowing comparisons across countries and fourth dimension; if more single people are having children, information technology suggests that more people are entering long-term cohabiting relationships without first getting married. It isn't a perfect proxy – as we'll see below, rates of single parenting have also inverse, meaning that rates of births outside marriage will not match perfectly with cohabitation rates – merely information technology provides some information regarding the direction of alter.

The chart here shows the percentage of all children who were built-in to unmarried parents.

Equally we can see, the share of children built-in outside of marriage has increased substantially in about all OECD countries in recent decades. The exception is Nihon, where there has been merely a very small-scale increment.

In 1970, most OECD countries saw less than ten% of children born outside of wedlock. In 2014, the share had increased to more than than 20% in almost countries, and to more half in some.

The trend is not restricted to very rich countries. In United mexican states and Costa Rica, for example, the increase has been very large, and today the majority of children are born to single parents.

Globally, the percent of women in either marriage or cohabitation is decreasing, but just slightly

In recent decades there has been a refuse in global spousal relationship rates, and at the same fourth dimension that there has been an increase in cohabitation. What's the combined effect if we consider marriage and cohabitation together?

The nautical chart below plots estimates and projections, from the United nations Population Division, for the percentage of women of reproductive historic period (fifteen to 49 years) who are either married or living with an unmarried partner.

Overall, the trend shows a global decline – merely but a relatively small one, from 69% in 1970 to 64% projected for 2020. At whatsoever given betoken in the last five decades, around ii-thirds of all women were married or cohabitated.

In that location are differences between regions. In East Asia the share of women who are married or in a cohabiting marriage increased, in South America the share is apartment, and in N America and North Europe it declined.

Y'all tin use the pick 'Add region' to plot the series for other regions.

Single parenting is common, and in many countries it has increased in recent decades

This chart shows the share of households of a single parent living with dependent children.

In that location are large differences betwixt countries. In Colombia there has been an upward trend, and co-ordinate to the most recent estimates, thirteen% of all households are a single parent with one or more dependent children. In India, on the other hand, the corresponding figure is 5%, with no clear trend upward or down.⁶

The causes and situations leading to single parenting are varied, and unsurprisingly, single-parent families are very diverse in terms of socio-economic background and living arrangements, across countries, inside countries, and over time. However, there are some common patterns:

1. Women head the bulk of single-parent households, and this gender gap tends to exist stronger for parents of younger children. Across OECD countries, almost 12% of children aged 0-5 years alive with a unmarried parent; 92% of these live with their female parent.⁷
2. Single-parent households are among the near financially vulnerable groups. This is true even in rich countries. Co-ordinate to Eurostat data, across European countries 47% of single-parent households were "at gamble of poverty or social exclusion" in 2017, compared with 21% of ii-parent households.⁸
3. Single parenting was probably more mutual a couple of centuries ago. Merely single parenting back then was often caused past high maternal bloodshed rather than choice or relationship breakdown; and it was likewise typically short in duration, since remarriage rates were high.⁹

Same-sex spousal relationship has become possible in many countries

Marriage equality is increasingly considered a human and civil right, with of import political, social, and religious implications around the world.

In 1989, Denmark became the first state to recognize a legal relationship for same-sex couples, establishing 'registered partnerships' granting those in same-sex relationships most of the rights given to married heterosexuals.

Information technology took more than a decade for same-sex marriage to be legal anywhere in the earth. In Dec 2000, the Netherlands became the first country to found same-sexual activity matrimony by police.

In the first two decades of the 21st century attitudes and legislation changed quickly in many countries: by December 2019 same-sex marriages were legally recognised in 30 countries.

Where are same-sexual practice marriages legal?

This map shows in green all the countries where aforementioned-sex activity marriage is legal. Besides shown are those countries where same-sex activity couples accept other rights such equally legal recognition of civil unions.

More than than one-half of the countries that permit aforementioned-sex marriage are in Western Europe. Only there are several Western European countries that still do not allow them. In Italian republic, Switzerland and Greece same-sex marriage is non legal, although in these countries at that place are alternative forms of recognition for same-sex couples.

Beyond all of Asia and Africa, the most populated regions in the world, aforementioned-sex spousal relationship is merely legal in two countries: Taiwan and Southward Africa.

Are same-sex marriages increasing in countries where they are legal?

The netherlands became the first country in the globe to open up upwards marriage for same-sex couples in December 2000. In 2001 a total of 2,414 same-sex couples got married. In the two years that followed the number of same-sexual activity marriages decreased, and later that it stabilized at a roughly constant level. (NB. Y'all tin can explore the information for the Netherlands in our interactive nautical chart hither .)

In other countries we come across a similar pattern – many same-sexual activity marriages accept place immediately after marriage equality laws are introduced. The nautical chart here shows this for the US, plotting estimates of the cumulative number of same-sex activity married couple households, using data from the American Community Survey.

Same-sex marriage in the US expanded from 1 state in 2004 to all fifty states in 2015, and the largest year-on-year growth was observed precisely during this menstruation, from 2012 to 2015.¹⁰

How mutual is spousal relationship among LGBT couples?

There are very few nationally representative surveys that specifically interview lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) adults. One important exception is a survey from Gallup in the US, with information for the period 2015-2017. The chart hither shows the marital status composition of LGBT adults in the US using information from this source.

For LGBT Americans, same-sex cohabitation is becoming less mutual, simply same-sex marriages are condign more so.

In 2017, 10.two% of LGBT adults in the U.s. were married to a same-sexual activity spouse. That is upward from 7.9% in the months prior to the Supreme Courtroom determination in 2015, but but marginally higher than the 9.6% measured in the offset year afterward the ruling.

Some perspective on the progress made regarding marriage equality

The charge per unit of adoption of marriage equality legislation over time gives us some perspective on just how quickly things have inverse. In the twelvemonth 2000 same-sex wedlock was non legal in whatsoever country – 20 years later it was legal in xxx countries.

Changes in attitudes towards homosexuality are one of the key factor that have enabled the legal transformations that are making aforementioned-sex spousal relationship increasingly possible.¹¹

As the 2d nautical chart here shows, the share of countries where same-sex sexual acts are considered a criminal offence has gone downward from 77% in 1960, to 34% in 2019.¹²

Despite these positive trends, much remains to exist done to amend the rights of LGBTQ people. In some countries people are imprisoned and fifty-fifty killed simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; and even in countries where same-sex activity sexual activity is legal, these groups of people confront violence and bigotry.

Marriage trends show that social institutions tin, and ofttimes practice change rapidly

Beyond the globe, fewer people are choosing to marry, and those who practice marry are, on average, doing and so later in life.  The underlying drivers of these trends include the rise of contraceptives, the increase of female participation in labor markets (as we explicate in our commodity here), and the transformation of institutional and legal environments, such every bit new legislation conferring more rights on unmarried couples.¹³

These changes have led to a broad transformation of family unit structures. In the last decades, many countries have seen an increase in cohabitation, and information technology is becoming more than mutual for children to alive with a single parent, or with parents who are not married.

These changes have come together with a large and significant shift in people's perceptions of the types of family structures that are possible, acceptable and desirable. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the rising of same-sex marriage.

The de-institutionalization of union and the ascent of new family models since the center of the 20th century show that social institutions that have been around for thousands of years tin change very quickly.

Divorce rates increased after 1970 – in contempo decades the trends very much differ betwixt countries

Trends in the charge per unit of divorces relative to the size of the population

How take divorce rates changed over time? Are divorces on the rise across the earth?

In the chart here we testify the crude divorce rate – the number of divorces per one,000 people in the country.

When we zoom out and expect at the large-calibration picture at the global or regional level since the 1970s, we encounter an overall increment in divorce rates. The United nations in its overview of global spousal relationship patterns notes that there is a general upward trend: "at the earth level, the proportion of adults anile 35-39 who are divorced or separated has doubled, passing from 2% in the 1970s to iv% in the 2000s."

Only, when nosotros look more closely at the data we can also encounter that this misses 2 key insights: at that place are notable differences betwixt countries; and it fails to capture the design of these changes in the catamenia from the 1990s to today.

Every bit we see in the chart, for many countries divorce rates increased markedly betwixt the 1970s and 1990s. In the U.s.a., divorce rates more than doubled from 2.ii per 1,000 in 1960 to over five per one,000 in the 1980s. In the UK, Norway and South korea, divorce rates more tripled. Since then divorce rates declined in many countries.

The trends vary substantially from country to country.

In the chart the Usa stands out as a bit of an outlier, with consistently college divorce rates than most other countries, but also an earlier 'peak'. South Korea had a much later 'acme', with divorce rates continuing to rise until the early 2000s. In other countries – such as Mexico and Turkey – divorces continue to rise. As the OECD Family unit Database notes, betwixt 1995 and 2017 (or the nearest available guess), divorce rates increased in 18 OECD countries, just fell in 12 others.

The pattern of rising divorce rates, followed by a plateau or fall in some countries (particularly richer countries) might be partially explained by the differences in divorce rates beyond cohorts, and the delay in marriage we see in younger couples today.

Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers looked in particular at the changes and driving forces in marriage and divorce rates in the US.¹⁴ They suggest that the changes we see in divorce rates may be partly reflective of the changes in expectations within marriages as women entered the workforce. Women who married before the large rise in female employment may take constitute themselves in marriages where expectations were no longer suited. Many people in the postwar years married someone who was probably a adept match for the postwar civilisation, but ended up being the wrong partner after the times had inverse. This may have been a driver backside the steep rise in divorces throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Trends in rough divorce rates give usa a general overview of how many divorces happen each twelvemonth, but demand to be interpreted with caution. First, crude rates mix a large number of cohorts – both older and young couples; and 2d, they do not account for how the number of marriages is changing.

To understand how patterns of divorce are changing it is more helpful to wait at pct of marriages that end in divorce, and wait in more detail at these patterns past cohort.

Let's take a look at a country where divorce rates been failing in recent decades.

In the nautical chart here we show the per centum of marriages which ended in divorce in England and Wales since 1963. This is broken downwardly by the number of years after matrimony – that is, the per centum of couples who had divorced five, x and xx years after they got married.

Here we see that for all three lines, the overall pattern is similar:

• The share of marriages that end in divorce increased through the 1960s to the 1990s.
• In 1963, only 1.5% of couples had divorced before their fifth ceremony, seven.viii% had divorced before their tenth, and 19% earlier their twentieth anniversary. Past the mid-1990s this had increased to eleven%, 25% and 38%, respectively.
• Since so, divorces have been on the reject. The percentage of couples divorcing in the first five years has halved since its 1990s height. And the percentage who got divorced within the outset 10 years of their union has also fallen significantly.

Divorces past age and cohort

What might explain the recent reduction in overall divorce rates in some countries?

The overall trend can exist broken down into two primal drivers: a reduction in the likelihood of divorce for younger cohorts; and a lengthening of spousal relationship earlier divorce for those that do separate.

We run across both of these factors in the analysis of divorce rates in the US from Stevenson and Wolfers.¹⁵ This nautical chart maps out the percentage of marriages catastrophe in divorce: each line represents the decade they got married (those married in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 1990s) and the x-centrality represents the years since the wedding.

We see that the share of marriages ending in divorce increased significantly for couples married in 1960s or 70s compared to those who got married in the 1950s. The probability of divorce inside x years was twice as high for couples married in the 1960s versus those who got married in the 1950s. For those married in the 1970s, it was more than three times as probable.

You might accept heard the popularised claim that "one-half of marriages end in divorce". We tin come across hither where that claim might come from – information technology was one time true: 48% of American couples that married in the 1970s were divorced within 25 years.

But since and then the likelihood of divorce has fallen. It barbarous for couples married in the 1980s, and over again for those in the 1990s. Both the likelihood of divorce has been falling, and the length of marriage has been increasing.

Share of marriages catastrophe in divorce in the The states, by year of union¹⁶

This is also true for marriages in the UK. This nautical chart shows the cumulative share of marriages that ended in divorce: each line represents the yr in which couples were married. A useful manner to compare different age cohorts is past the steepness of the line: steeper lines betoken a faster accumulation of divorces year-on-year, particularly in the earlier stages of marriages.

You might notice that the divorce curves for couples in the 1960s are shallower and tend to level out in the range of xx% to thirty%. Divorce rates then became increasingly steep throughout the 1970s; 80s and 90s, and eventually surpass cumulative rates from the 1960s. Simply, since the 1990s, these curves announced to exist falling once again, mirroring the findings from the US.

Nosotros don't know yet how long the marriages of younger couples today will concluding. It volition take several decades earlier we have the full picture show on more recent marriages and their eventual outcomes.

Marriages in many countries are getting longer

Every bit we saw from data on divorce rates, in some countries – particularly richer countries such every bit the UK, U.s. and Deutschland – divorce rates have been falling since the 1990s. This can be partially explained by a reduction in the share of marriages ending in divorce, only too by the length of marriages before their dissolution.

How has the length of marriages changed over time?

In the chart here we see the duration of marriages before divorce across a number of countries where this data is available. An important bespeak to notation here is that the definitions are not consistent beyond countries: some countries report the median length of spousal relationship; others the mean. Since the distribution of spousal relationship lengths is often skewed, the median and mean values can exist quite different. Equally the UK Part for National Statistics notes:

"The median duration of matrimony at divorce in this release is represented by the middle value when the data are bundled in increasing social club. The median is used, rather than the mean, considering the duration of marriage for divorces is non symmetrically distributed. Therefore, the median provides a more accurate reflection of this distribution. The hateful would be afflicted past the relatively small number of divorces that take place when elapsing of marriage exceeds 15 years."

Then, we have to go on this in heed and be careful if we make cross-country comparisons. On the nautical chart shown we note for each country whether the marriage duration is given every bit the median or mean value.

But, we tin proceeds insights for single countries over time. What we see for a number of countries is that the average duration of spousal relationship earlier divorce has been increasing since the 1990s or early on 2000s. If nosotros have the UK as an example: marriages got notably shorter between the 1970s to the afterward 1980s, falling from around 12 to nine years. Merely, marriages take in one case once again increased in length, ascent dorsum to over 12 years.

This mirrors what nosotros saw in data on the share of marriages ending in divorce: divorce rates increased significantly betwixt the 1960s/70s through the 1990s, but have seen a fall since then.

We encounter a similar pattern in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore. However, there is still a significant corporeality of heterogeneity between countries.

Data sources

United nations World Marriage Data

• Data: Marital status, marriage rates, and hateful historic period of marriage, broken down by sex
• Geographical coverage: Unmarried countries effectually the world
• Time span: from 1971 onwards
• Available at: Online here.

United nations Population Sectionalisation

• Data: Household size and composition (including unmarried parent households)
• Geographical coverage: Unmarried countries around the world
• Time span: from 1960 onwards
• Bachelor at: Online hither.

OECD Family Database

• Data: Marital and divorce rates, births exterior of union, and cohabitation status
• Geographical coverage: OECD countries only
• Fourth dimension span: from 1970 onwards
• Available at: Online here.

Eurostat

• Data: Rough marriage and divorce rates; children born outside of marriage
• Geographical coverage: European countries only
• Time bridge: from 1960 onwards
• Available at: Online hither.

Pew Inquiry Center

• Data: Policies and legalisation of same-sex marriage
• Geographical coverage: Unmarried countries beyond the world
• Time span: from 2000 onwards
• Available at: Online here.

National Statistical Agencies

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Source: https://ourworldindata.org/marriages-and-divorces

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