{"id":13113,"date":"2012-05-15T02:05:51","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T02:05:51","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-05-15T02:05:51","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T02:05:51","slug":"Marriage-Rate-Falls-to-Record-Low-in-U-S-","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13113","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Rate Falls to Record Low in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook may seem some days like a laundry list of \u201cjust married\u201d profile updates complete with images of smiling brides and grooms, but according to the Pew Research Center, barely half of U.S. adults are married, the lowest percentage ever. W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, said that marriage had been \u201cin retreat\u201d in the last 40 years and that the decline had accelerated since the recession started in 2008. \u201cMarriage is less likely to anchor the adult life course,\u201d he told ABC News today. \u201cIt\u2019s less likely to ground children\u2019s experience with family life. It plays a less central role as an institution in American life.\u201d
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In 1960, 72 percent of U.S. adults age 18 and older were married compared with 51 percent today. The median age when adults decide to finally take that big step is also the highest its ever been for both men and women \u2014 26.5 and 28.7 respectively. The most dramatic decline in marriage occurred among those 18-29. Just 20 percent of them are now married; 59 percent were married in 1960.<\/strong> Wilcox said that people felt more comfortable postponing marriage until their late 20s and early 30s these days. He said the 20s were viewed as the \u201codyssey years,\u201d and a time to \u201cfind yourself.\u201d For many, Wilcox added, marriage is still viewed as an economic institution, not just about love and living happily ever after. \u201cPeople are looking for a soul mate but also a person with a decent job,\u201d he said today. \u201cThe bar has been raised. Expectations are higher.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Pew, which examined U.S. Census data, said that other living arrangements \u2014 including cohabitation, single-person households and single-parents households \u2013 were becoming more prevalent. The number of new marriages fell by 5 percent between 2009 and 2010.<\/p>\n

Wilcox said that while U.S. adults without college degrees were marrying less, they increasingly were having children in nonmarital situations.<\/strong> \u201cIn the minds of Americans, getting married and becoming parents are two different things,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir top priority is being a parent, second to having a successful marriage. People have separated the two things. Years ago, they were closely linked to one another.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> \u201cThe bottom line is that kids are experiencing more instability and more hardship because the adults are less likely to get and stay married,\u201d Wilcox said.<\/em><\/strong> Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults had been married at least once, though this was a decrease from 85 percent in 1960.<\/p>\n

A survey done by Pew and Time magazine in 2010 of 2,691 Americans found that nearly four in 10 Americans said that marriage was becoming obsolete. Forty-four percent of those 18-20 said it was obsolete.<\/em><\/strong> The recession seems to be socking Americans in the heart as well as the wallet: Marriages have hit an all-time low while pleas for food stamps have reached a record high and the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever.<\/p>\n

The annual survey covers all of last year, when unemployment skyrocketed to 10 percent, and the jobless rate is still a stubbornly high 9.6 percent. The figures also show that Americans on average have been spending 36 fewer minutes in the office per week and are stuck in traffic a bit less. But that is hardly good news, either. The reason is largely that people have lost jobs or are scraping by with part-time work. In the United States, marriages fell to a record low in 2009, with 52 percent of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57 percent in 2000. The never-married included 46.3 percent of young adults 25-34, with sharp increases in single people in cities in the Midwest and Southwest, including Cleveland, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque. It was the first time the share of unmarried young adults exceeded those who were married.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together, and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments. In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them. The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans \u2014 those making more than $100,000 each year \u2014 received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the United States, compared with the 3.4 percent earned by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.
\n<\/em><\/strong>
\nSOURCE<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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