[GO TO Format for printing]

The State of Our Unions

The Social Health of Marriage in America

2005

Essay: Marriage and Family: What Does the Scandinavian Experience Tell Us?
 

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

David Popenoe

© Copyright 2005

Including the annual index of

SOCIAL INDICATORS OF MARITAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING: TRENDS OF THE PAST FOUR DECADES

Marriage

Divorce

Unmarried Cohabitation

Loss of Child Centeredness

Fragile Families with Children

Teen Attitudes About Marriage and Family

·                     Information About the National Marriage Project

·                     The National Marriage Project Leadership

·                     The National Marriage Project Research Advisory Board

            As the first university-based initiative devoted exclusively to the study of contemporary marriage, the National Marriage Project provides research and analysis on the state of marriage and marital relationships in America.  This year’s The State of Our Unions is our seventh annual report.  As in previous years, the publication is divided into two parts. The first, an essay by David Popenoe, looks at marriage and family trends in the U.S. and Scandinavia, with a special focus on Sweden.  The second part features what we consider the most important annually or biennially updated indicators concerning marriage, divorce, unmarried cohabitation, child-centeredness, fragile families, and teen attitudes about marriage and family.

            The divorce rate, one indicator of marital stability, continued to drop last year, continuing a downward trend that began around 1980 when the rate was 22.6 per 1000 married women.  It fell to 17.7 in 2004 from 18.1 in the prior year.  However, the marriage rate, the number of marriages per 1000 unmarried women, has also been dropping—by nearly 50 percent since 1970 when the rate was 76.5.  It fell to 39.9 in 2004 from 40.8 the prior year.  The number of unwed cohabitating couples continues to rise.  Both the percentage of births to unwed mothers and the percentage of children living with a single parent increased slightly, reaching record highs.  Overall, except for the drop in divorce, the latest indicators point to little improvement in marital health and wellbeing.  

            There are some small indications that attitudes among high school seniors are changing in a pro-marriage direction. The percentage of seniors who agreed or mostly agreed with the statement “it is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along” has shown a surprising decrease since the late 1990s. The empirical reality that cohabitation is not good for marriage may be becoming more widely known. On the other hand, more than 50 percent of both boys and girls now say that “having a child without being married is experimenting with a worthwhile lifestyle and not affecting anyone else,” the percentage having increased sharply over the years, especially among girls.    

David Popenoe

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

July 2005

About This Year’s Essay

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

American progressives look to Scandinavia as a model for achieving family and child well-being.  If only the U.S. would adopt Sweden or Norway’s generous family leave and other health and welfare policies, they argue, we too could achieve similarly low rates of child poverty, teen pregnancy, and single parenthood.  Social conservatives, on the other hand, point to Sweden as a cautionary example of how generous social welfare policies weaken marriage and the family.  But neither side tells the whole story. 

This year’s essay by David Popenoe provides a more complete picture of the Scandinavian experience, with a focus on Sweden.  It finds support for the progressive view that Sweden’s social welfare policies have helped to create a child-friendly society.  Child poverty barely exists.  Teen birthrates are very low.  Few infants are in daycare because mothers enjoy one full year of paid family leave after the birth of a child. 

The essay also finds support for the conservative view that Swedish policies have contributed to the weakening of marriage and the family.  There are no economic or other incentives to marry and, not surprisingly, the Swedish marriage rate is one of the lowest in the world and considerably lower than other Western European nations.  Meanwhile, the risk of divorce is high and continues to rise for married couples.   Sweden also leads the Western nations in nonmarital cohabitation where the risk of breakup is twice that of married parents.

At the same time, because of its concern for children, the Swedish approach includes policies that many American social conservatives would embrace, such as strict limits on abortion, a six-month waiting period before parents are allowed to divorce, and a ban on in vitro fertilization for single women and on anonymous sperm donations for all couples.

Both the U.S. and Sweden are among the industrialized nations with the lowest percentage of children growing up with both biological parents.   Both have similarly high family breakup rates.  Both share post-modernist outlooks.  Yet despite these commonalities, the two societies have very different cultural traditions.    Sweden is highly communitarian, ethnically homogeneous, socially cohesive, and resolutely secular.  America is highly libertarian, ethnically diverse and strongly religious.  Though Scandinavian family policies may be inspirational models for creating a more child and family-friendly society, Americans can’t simply import Scandinavian policies and achieve Scandinavian results.  To achieve a more child-centered society, Americans will

have to find ways to check the corrosive effects of its consumerist and radically individualist culture on marriage and the family.  

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY:  WHAT DOES THE SCANDINAVIAN EXPERIENCE TELL US?

David Popenoe

     Many Americans have long had a ready answer to America’s family problems:  We should become more like Scandinavia.  Whether the issues are work-family, teen sex, child poverty, or marital break-up, a range of Scandinavian family and welfare policies is commonly put forth with the assertion that, if only these could be instituted in America, family life in our nation would significantly be improved.  But what can we in the United States really learn from Scandinavia? The Scandinavian nations are so small and demographically homogeneous that the idea of simply transferring their social policies to this country must be viewed as problematic.   Sweden, for example, the largest Scandinavian nation and the one featured in this essay, has only nine million people compared to our population of nearly 300 million.  And how well have these policies actually worked in Scandinavia?  As this essay will make clear, some of the Scandinavian family policies have, indeed, been quite successful on their own home ground. Yet aside from the potential non-transferability of these policies, by focusing so much attention on them we may be overlooking some even more important aspects of the Scandinavian family experience.

Comparative Family Change: Sweden and the United States

It is now well known that there has been a weakening of marriage and the nuclear family in advanced, industrialized societies, especially since the 1960s. What is not well known is the surprising fact that the two nations which lead in this weakening are Sweden and the United States—two nations which stand at almost opposite extremes in terms of their socioeconomic systems.  Let us look at one telling statistical measure.  Defining the nuclear family as a mother and father living together with their own biological children, a good measure of nuclear familism in a society is the percentage of children under the age of 18 who live with both biological parents.  This percentage for the United States is 63, the lowest among Western industrialized nations. The second from lowest is Sweden, at 73! (1)

 How is this possible?  At the one socioeconomic extreme Sweden has the strongest public sector, the highest taxes, and is the most secular. At the other, the United States has the weakest public sector, the lowest taxes, and is the most religious. Could these fundamental factors mostly be irrelevant to family change?  And if so, what key factors are involved?  As we shall see, the answer to this intellectual puzzle is to be found largely in the realm of a post-modern trend shared by both nations.  But first we need to consider other family differences between the two nations.  Two key differences stand out: in the United States more people marry, but they also divorce in large numbers; in Sweden, fewer people marry, but the Swedish divorce rate is a little lower than ours.

Here is the recent statistical record, beginning with Sweden. The Swedish marriage rate by the late 1990s was one of the lowest in the world; indeed, one of the lowest marriage rates ever recorded and considerably lower than the rates of other Western European nations. (2) If this rate holds, only about 60 percent of Swedish women today will “ever marry,” compared to over 85 percent in the U.S.  This is a quite recent development. Not so long ago the two nations were quite similar:  For the generation marrying in the 1950s, the figure for Sweden was 91 percent and for the US 95 percent.

Sweden’s low marriage rate does not mean that Swedes are living alone; rather, they are living together outside of marriage—another area in which Sweden has been in the vanguard.  In fact, Sweden leads the Western nations in the degree to which nonmarital cohabitation has replaced marriage. The United States, on the other hand, has a lower rate of nonmarital cohabitation than all but the Catholic nations of southern Europe. About 28 percent of all couples in Sweden are cohabiting, versus eight percent of all American couples.  In Sweden virtually all couples live together before marriage, compared to around two-thirds of couples currently in America. Many couples in Sweden don’t marry even when they have children.  In a recent opinion poll Swedish young adults were asked whether it was OK to cohabit even after having children; 89 percent of women and 86 percent of men answered “yes.” (3)

Why is the Swedish marriage rate so low relative to other nations?  In brief, because religion there is weak, a left-wing political ideology has long been dominant, and almost all governmental incentives for marriage have been removed.  First, the religious pressure for marriage in Sweden is all but gone (although of the marriages that do occur, many are for vague religious reasons). Any religious or cultural stigma in Sweden against cohabitation is no longer in evidence; it is regarded as irrelevant to question whether a couple is married or just living together. Second, the political left wing throughout Europe has generally been antagonistic to strong families, based on a combination of feminist concerns about patriarchy and oppression, an antipathy toward a bourgeois social institution with traditional ties to nobility and privilege, and the belief that families have been an impediment to full equality.  Finally, unlike in the United States all government benefits in Sweden are given to individuals irrespective of their intimate relationships or family form. There is no such thing, for example, as spousal benefits in health care. There is also no joint-income taxation for married couples; all income taxation is individual.   

Turning to the United States, if Sweden stands out for having the lowest marriage rate, the United States is notable for having the world’s highest divorce rate. Given the divorce rates of recent years, the risk of a marriage ending in divorce in the United States is close to 50 percent, compared to a little over 40 percent in Sweden.  Why is the American divorce rate so high relative to other nations?  Mainly because of our relatively high ethnic, racial and religious diversity, inequality of incomes with a large underclass, and extensive residential mobility, each of which is associated with high divorce. Revealingly, if one looks at the divorce rate of the relatively homogeneous and Scandinavian-settled state of Minnesota, it is only slightly higher than that of Sweden. (4) Another big divorce risk factor in America is marrying at a young age; the average U.S. ages of first marriage today are 26 for women and 27 for men, versus 31 and 33 in Sweden. As a more consumer-oriented and economically dynamic society, in addition, there is probably something about this nation that promotes a more throw-away attitude toward life.  And let us not overlook the dominant influence of Hollywood and pop culture in general, with their emphasis on feel good and forget the consequences.

Of course if people don’t marry, they can’t divorce.  And that is one reason why, by certain measures, Sweden has a lower divorce rate.   But if couples just cohabit they certainly can break-up, and that is what Swedish nonmarital couples do in large numbers.  It is estimated that the risk of breakup for cohabiting couples in Sweden, even those with children, is several times higher than for married couples.  By one indication, in the year 2000 there were two-and-one-half separations or divorces per 100 children among married parents, almost twice that number among unmarried cohabiting parents living with their own biological children, and three times that number among cohabiting couples living with children from a previous relationship. (5) Already one of the highest in Western Europe, the Swedish divorce rate has been growing in recent years, while the U.S. rate has been declining. If we consider this convergence of divorce rates, and count both cohabiting couples and married couples, the total family breakup rate in the two nations today is actually quite similar.

So why, in view of the similarity of overall family breakup rates, are more Swedish than American children living with their biological parents? This is especially surprising in view of the fact that the Swedish nonmarital birth percentage is much higher than that of the United States (56 percent in Sweden vs. 35 percent in the U.S.).  The main reason is that far more nonmarital births in Sweden, about 90 percent, are actually to biological parents who are living together but have not married, compared to just 40 percent in the United States.  The great majority of nonmarital births in the U.S., 60 percent, are to truly single, non-cohabiting mothers.  This discrepancy reflects the far higher rate of births in the United States to teenagers, the stage of life at which the father is least likely to remain involved with the mother and child. (6) The relatively high U.S. teen birthrate, in turn, is commonly accounted for by more teen sexual activity combined with less use of contraceptives.  There is also a discrepancy between the two countries in that the United States has about twice Sweden’s rate of “unwanted” children (7)    

Having sketched out these noteworthy differences in family structure between the United States and Sweden, together with some causal explanations for the differences, what are some reasonable conclusions that can be drawn from the Scandinavian family experience?

The Sweden Nobody Knows

In the U.S., Sweden has long been identified with liberated sexuality.  But there’s another side to Sweden.  When it comes to the lives and well-being of children, this secular society imposes more stringent legal restrictions on sexual and family behavior than the U.S.  Here are four issues affecting children where Sweden takes a more conservative approach than the U.S.

Legal Divorce

Sweden:  All married couples with children, 16 or under, must wait six months before a divorce becomes final

U.S.:  Most states make no distinction in their divorce laws between couples with children and couples without

In Vitro Fertilization

Sweden:   Allowable only if a woman is married or cohabiting in a long-term relationship resembling marriage

U.S.:        No restrictions

Anonymous Sperm Donation

Sweden:    Prohibited

U.S.:          No restrictions

Abortion

Sweden:     No abortion allowed after the 18^th week of pregnancy without review and permission from the National Board of health

U.S.:           Abortions allowed for pregnancies through the third trimester in all but three states

The Decline of Marriage

If a society deinstitutionalizes marriage, as Sweden has done through its tax and benefit policies and the secularization of its culture, marriage will weaken.  In addition, because most adults still like to live as couples, human pair-bonding doesn’t disappear when this happens.  Rather, the institution of marriage is replaced by nonmarital cohabitation—marriage lite.  Then, if one institutionalizes nonmarital cohabitation in the laws and government policies, as Sweden has also done, making it the virtual equivalent of marriage, marriage will decline still further. 

In the modern world people are reluctant to make strong commitments if they don’t have to; it’s easier to hang loose.  The problem is that society ends up with adult intimate relationships that are much more fragile.  It is, indeed, surprising that Sweden has such a high a level of couple breakup, because it is the kind of society—stable, homogeneous, and egalitarian—where one would expect such breakups to be minimal.  Yet the high breakup level is testimony to the fragility of modern marriage in which most of the institutional bonds have been stripped away—economic dependence, legal definitions, religious sentiments, and family pressures—leaving marriage and other pair-bonds held together solely by the thin and unstable reed of affection.

The losers in this social trend, of course, are the children.  They are highly dependent for their development and success in life on the family in which they are born and raised, and a convincing mass of scientific evidence now exists pointing to the fact that not growing up in an intact nuclear family is one of the most deleterious events that can befall a child.  In Sweden, just as in the United States, children from non-intact families—compared to those from intact families—have two to three times the number of serious problems in life. (8) We can only speculate about the extent of psychological damage that future generations will suffer owing to today’s family trends.  That the very low marriage rate and high level of parental break-up are such non-issues in Sweden, something which few Swedes ever talk about, should be, in my opinion, a cause there for national soul searching.

Scandinavian Child Rearing

All that said, however, there are other important conclusions one can draw from the Scandinavian family experience.  What most Americans don’t realize is that, in a strict comparison, Scandinavia is probably preferable to the United States today as a place to raise young children.  In other writings I have suggested that the ideal family environment for raising young children has the following traits: an enduring two-biological parent family that engages regularly in activities together, has developed its own routines, traditions and stories, and provides a great deal of contact time between adults and children.  Surrounded by a community that is child friendly and supportive of parents, the family is able to develop a vibrant family subculture that provides a rich legacy of meaning and values for children throughout their lives.(9)  Scandinavians certainly fall short on the enduring two-biological parent part of this ideal (yet even there they are currently ahead of the United States), but on the key ingredients of structured and consistent contact time between parents and their children in a family friendly environment, they are well ahead of us.  

In America today the achievement of this ideal family environment requires what many parents are coming to consider a Herculean countercultural effort, one that involves trying to work fewer hours and adopting the mantra of “voluntary simplicity” for those who can afford it; turning off the TV set and avoiding popular culture; seeking employment in firms that have family-friendly policies such as flexible working hours; and residing in areas that are better designed for children and where the cost of living is lower. Families in Scandinavia need not be so countercultural to achieve these goals because the traits of the ideal child-rearing environment are to a larger degree already built into their societies.

The Scandinavian societies tend to be “soft” or low-key, with much more leisure time and not so much frantic consumerism and economic striving as in the United States.  Perhaps one could even say that they practice “involuntary simplicity.”  The average American would probably find life in Scandinavia rather uncomfortable due to high taxes, strict government regulation, limited consumer choice, smaller dwelling units, social conformity, and a soft work ethic, not to mention possible boredom. There are also growing concerns about the quality of education in Scandinavia. Moreover, the Scandinavian system may ultimately prove to be so counterproductive for economic growth that it becomes unsustainable. (At any one time more than 20% of working-age Swedes are either on sick leave, unemployed, or have taken early retirement, and the nation has recently sunk to one of the lowest per capita income levels in Western Europe! 10)  But in the meantime, and compared to other modern nations, the system seems particularly good for the rearing of young children. 

The Scandinavian child-rearing advantage is probably as much cultural as governmental, as much due to the way Scandinavians think about children as to specific welfare state policies (although the two are, of course, interrelated.)  Scandinavian culture has always been more child centered than the more individualistic Anglo societies.  The emphasis in Scandinavian culture on nature and the outdoor environment, conflict-aversion, and even social conformity happens to be especially child friendly.  Children benefit from highly structured, stable, and low-conflict settings.  There are in Scandinavia many statues of children and mothers in public parks (in place of war heroes!), and planned housing environments are heavily oriented to pedestrian access and children’s play.  Scandinavian children even have their own Ombudsmen who represent them officially in the government and monitor children’s rights and interests. Interestingly, Minnesota—the most Scandinavian-settled U.S. state—was recently ranked the number one state in the nation for child wellbeing by the Kids Count Data Book. (11)

The Scandinavian concern for children, sometimes even smacking of “traditional family values,” is expressed in some areas that should surprise those Americans who think only of “decadent welfare states.”  For example, all Swedish married couples with children aged 16 and younger, should they want a divorce, have a six month waiting period before a divorce becomes final.  Most American states make no distinction in their divorce laws between couples with children and those without.  In vitro fertilization in Sweden can be performed only if the woman is married or cohabiting in a relationship resembling marriage, and completely anonymous sperm donations are not allowed, whereas the practice of “assisted reproduction” in America goes virtually unregulated. And no Swedish abortion can take place after the 18^th week of pregnancy except under special circumstances and only with permission from the National Board of Health. The laws permitting abortion are much more liberal in the United States.  Some of these positions are made possible, of course, by the fact that the Scandinavian societies are more homogeneous, unified and less rights-oriented than the United States.

Scandinavian Family Policies

Just as in the United States at least up until welfare reform, welfare policies in Scandinavia have not been drawn up with an eye toward encouraging marriage and limiting family breakup, a very serious problem as noted above.  There are relatively few economic disincentives to becoming a single parent in Sweden, in fact probably fewer than in any other society in the world.  Nevertheless, many Scandinavian welfare-state policies have brought significant benefits to children and to child-rearing families.  Scandinavian family leave policies, especially, seem highly desirable for young children.  Almost all mothers in Sweden, for example, and far more than in the United States, are at home with their infants up until age one—which is the critical year for mother-child connection.  They have one year off from their job at 80% or more of their salary (and an additional six months at reduced salary), with a guarantee of returning to their old job or its equivalent when they reenter the labor force.  Recently, two months have been set aside solely for fathers to take; if they don’t take it, the benefit is lost. Because of these family leave policies very few Swedish infants under the age of one are in day care or other out-of-home childcare arrangement, a quite different situation from the United States. In addition, to help defray the expenses of child rearing, all Swedish parents receive a non-means-tested child allowance and there is also a means-tested housing allowance.

Beyond these benefits, Scandinavian mothers and fathers have far more flex-time from their work to be home with children during the growing-up years, and most women with young children work just part-time.  There are certainly fewer full-time, non-working, stay-at-home mothers in Sweden than in the United States, in fact almost none because it is economically prohibitive. But in actual parenting time—although good comparative data are unavailable—Sweden may well be in the lead.  The larger number of stay-at-home moms in America is off-set by the larger number of full-time working mothers, many of whom return to work during their child’s first year.  It is of interest to note that many fewer Swedish women have top positions in the private sector than is the case in America, and this has long been a bone of contention for American feminists when they look at Sweden.  By one recent analysis only one-and-a-half percent of senior management positions are filled by women in Sweden, compared to eleven percent in the United States. (12) The amount of time that Swedish mothers devote to child care clearly has affected their ability to rise in the private sector hierarchy of jobs, although this is off-set in some degree by their much stronger status in the public sector where a high percentage of the jobs are located. 

Finally, let us not forget that as a result of welfare state policies child poverty in Sweden is virtually nonexistent (for the 1990s, one percent compared to 15 percent in the United States) and all children are covered by health insurance.  These and related factors are doubtless of importance in placing Sweden at the top of the list of the best places in the world to live, surpassed only by Norway according to the Human Development Index prepared by the United Nations Development Program, and based on income, life expectancy and education. (13)  The United States ranks well down the list, at eighth place, doubtless due in part to the fact that we have a far different population mix than these other nations.

Again, the two societies are such polar opposites at least among Western nations, as we have indicated, that it is a mistake to think that what works in Sweden could necessarily be transplanted to America.  Up to now, at least, the Scandinavian nations have had that strong sense of “brotherhood” or “sisterhood” that is required for a strong welfare state. The common sentiment has been that the high taxes are going for a good cause, “my fellow Swede.” Indeed, the lack of outcry against high taxation in Scandinavia comes as a shock to most visiting Americans. To suggest that this communal spirit and attitude toward government and taxation could ever exist in the United States, with all its diversity and individualism, is to enter the realm of utopian thinking.  So it is unclear how many of these family policies could be implemented in the United States, and what their actual effect would be if they were.  But, given their often beneficial effects in Scandinavia, they should not be rejected out of hand.

The Trend of Modernity

This leaves us with a final conclusion from the Scandinavian family experience, a more general one.  The fact that family breakdown has occurred so prevalently in both the United States and Scandinavia, two almost opposite socio-economic systems, suggests that the root cause lies beyond politics and economics and even national culture in an over-arching trend of modernity that affects all advanced, industrial societies.  Basic to this trend is the growth of a modern form of individualism, the single-minded pursuit of personal autonomy and self-interest, which takes place at the expense of established social institutions such as marriage. This shows up in low marriage and high cohabitation rates in the Scandinavian societies, even though they are relatively communitarian.  And it is expressed in high divorce and high solo parenting rates in the United States, despite our nation’s relatively religious character.   

One paramount family goal for modern societies today, put forward by many experts, is to create the conditions whereby an increasing number of children are able to grow up with their own two married parents.  If this is a worthy goal, and I think it is, both Scandinavia and the United States have failed badly, and millions of children have been hurt.  If we are to take seriously the record of recent history in these nations, the market economy on its own, no matter how strong, is unlikely to be of much help in achieving this goal. The wealthier we become, the weaker the family.  But neither, apparently, are the many governmental policies of the welfare state.  They may help to soften the impact of family breakup, but the state appears relatively powerless to contain family decline and often even contributes to it. What we must look for, instead, are ways to curtail the growth of modern individualism.  While in Scandinavia the main thrust of such efforts probably should focus on resisting the anti-marriage influences of political ideologies and social policies, in the United States the main issue is surely to find better ways to insulate marriage and the family from the pernicious effects of a self-interest-fostering market economy that is tethered increasingly to a coarsening popular culture.

FOOTNOTES

1.  Data for U.S. from Living Arrangements of Children (Washington, DC: Census Bureau, 1996); for Sweden, Barn och deras familjer 2001 (Children and their families), Demografiska Rapporter 2003:2, (Statistics Sweden, 2003)

2. Number of marriages per 1000 unmarried women in 2002—Sweden: 17.5; US: 43.4. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics in this essay were gathered or computed by the National Marriage Project from official statistical sources in each nation. 

3.  Reported in E. Bernhardt, Att gifta sig—eller bara bo ihop (To marry, or just live together) Valfardsbulletinen 4 (2001)

4. Number of divorces per 1000 married women in 2002—Sweden: 13.7; Minnesota: 14.7; US: 18.4.

5. Barn och deras familjer2000 (Children and their families), Demografiska Rapporter 2002:2 (Statistics Sweden, 2002).  A recent study found that 50 percent of children born to a cohabiting couple in the United States see their parents’ union end by age five, compared to only 15 percent of children born to a married couple. Wendy D. Manning, Pamela J. Smock and Debarum Majumdar, “The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children,” Population Research and Policy Review 23:135-159 (2004)

6. Births per 1000 girls ages 15-19 in 2002—US: 43; Sweden: 5.

7. Elise F. Jones et. al., Pregnancy, Contraception, and Family Planning Services in Industrialized Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) Appendix B, p. 243

8.  Gunilla Ringback Weitoft, Anders Hjern, Bengt Haglund and Mans Rosen, “Mortality, severe morbidity, and injury in children living with single parents in Sweden: A population-based study” The Lancet 361: 289-295 (2003)

9.  See David Popenoe, War over the Family (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005) Chapter 1

10.  Reported in Sweden’s leading newspaper, Dagen’s Nyheter, on August 23, 2004

11.  (Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2004)

12.  Cited in Catherine Hakim, Key Issues in Women’s Work (London, Glasshouse Press, 2004)

13.  (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2004)

SOCIAL INDICATORS OF MARITAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING

TRENDS OF THE PAST FOUR DECADES

Marriage

Divorce

Unmarried Cohabitation

Loss of Child Centeredness

Fragile Families with Children

Teen Attitudes About Marriage and Family

MARRIAGE

Key Finding: Marriage trends in recent decades indicate that Americans have become less likely to marry, and the most recent data show that the marriage rate in the United States continues to decline. Of those who do marry, there has been a moderate drop since the 1970s in the percentage of couples who consider their marriages to be "very happy," but in the past decade this trend has swung in a positive direction.

Americans have become less likely to marry. This is reflected in a decline of nearly 50 percent, from 1970 to 2004, in the annual number of marriages per 1000 unmarried adult women (Figure 1). Some of this decline—it is not clear just how much—results from the delaying of first marriages until older ages: the median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2004. Other factors accounting for the decline are the growth of unmarried cohabitation and a small decrease in the tendency of divorced persons to remarry.

The decline also reflects some increase in lifelong singlehood, though the actual amount can not be known until current young and middle-aged adults pass through the life course.

The percentage of adults in the population who are currently married has also diminished. Since 1960, the decline of those married among all persons age 15 and older has been 14 percentage points—and over 29 points among black females (Figure 2). It should be noted that these data include both people who have never married and those who have married and then divorced. (For some economic implications of the decline of marriage, see the accompanying box: “The Surprising Economic Benefits of Marriage.”)

In order partially to control for a decline in married adults simply due to delayed first marriages, we have looked at changes in the percentage of persons age 35 through 44 who were married (Figure 3). Since 1960, there has been a drop of 22  percentage points for married men and 20 points for married women.

Marriage trends in the age range of 35 to 44 are suggestive of lifelong singlehood. In times past and still today, virtually all persons who were going to marry during their lifetimes had married by age 45. More than 90 percent of women have married eventually in every generation for which records exist, going back to the mid-1800s. By 1960, 94 percent of women then alive had been married at least once by age 45—probably an historical high point. (1)  For the generation of 1995, assuming a continuation of then current marriage rates, several demographers projected that 88 percent of women and 82 percent of men would ever marry. (2) If and when these figures are recalculated for the early years of the 21^st century, the percentage of women and men ever marrying will almost certainly be lower.

It is important to note that the decline in marriage does not mean that people are giving up on living together with a sexual partner. On the contrary, with the incidence of unmarried cohabitation increasing rapidly, marriage is giving ground to unwed unions. Most people now live together before they marry for the first time. An even higher percentage of those divorced who subsequently remarry live together first. And a growing number of persons, both young and old, are living together with no plans for eventual marriage.

There is a common belief that, although a smaller percentage of Americans are now marrying than was the case a few decades ago, those who marry have marriages of higher quality. It seems reasonable that if divorce removes poor marriages from the pool of married couples and cohabitation "trial marriages" deter some bad marriages from forming, the remaining marriages on average should be happier. The best available evidence on the topic, however, does not support these assumptions. Since 1973, the General Social Survey periodically has asked representative samples of married Americans to rate their marriages as either "very happy," "pretty happy," or "not too happy."(3) As Figure 4 indicates, the percentage of both men and women saying "very happy" has declined moderately over the past 25 years.(4) This trend, however, is now heading in a positive direction.

1 Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992): 10; Michael R. Haines, "Long-Term Marriage Patterns in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present," The History of the Family 1-1 (1996): 15-39

2 Robert Schoen and Nicola Standish, "The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995." Population and Development Review 27-3 (2001): 553-563.

3 Conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, this is a nationally representative study of the English-speaking, non-institutionalized population of the United States age 18 and over.

4 Using a different data set that compared marriages in 1980 with marriages in 1992, equated in terms of marital duration, Stacy J. Rogers and Paul Amato found similarly that the 1992 marriages had less marital interaction, more marital conflict, and more marital problems. "Is Marital Quality Declining? The Evidence from Two Generations," Social Forces 75 (1997): 1089

THE SURPRISING ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE

When thinking of the many benefits of marriage, the economic aspects are often overlooked.  Yet the economic benefits of marriage are substantial, both for individuals and for society as a whole.  Marriage is a wealth generating institution.  Married couples create more economic assets on average than do otherwise similar singles or cohabiting couples.  A 1992 study of retirement data concluded that “individuals who are not continuously married have significantly lower wealth than those who remain married throughout their lives.” Compared to those continuously married, those who never married have a reduction in wealth of 75% and those who divorced and didn’t remarry have a reduction of 73%.^(a)

One might think that the explanation for why marriage generates economic assets is because those people who are more likely to be wealth creators are also more likely to marry and stay married.  And this is certainly true, but only in part.  The institution of marriage itself provides a wealth-generation bonus.  It does this through providing economies of scale (two can live more cheaply than one), and as implicitly a long-term personal contract it encourages economic specialization.  Working as a couple, individuals can develop those skills in which they excel, leaving others to their partner.

Also, married couples save and invest more for the future, and they can act as a small insurance pool against life uncertainties such as illness and job loss. ^(b)  Probably because of marital social norms that encourage healthy, productive behavior, men tend to become more economically productive after marriage; they earn between 10 and 40 percent more than do single men with similar education and job histories. ^(c)  All of these benefits are independent of the fact that married couples receive more work-related and government-provided support, and also more help and support from their extended families (two sets of in-laws) and friends. ^(d)

Beyond the economic advantages of marriage for the married couples themselves, marriage has a tremendous economic impact on society.  It is a major contributor to family income levels and inequality. After more than doubling between 1947 and 1977, the growth of median family income has slowed over the past 20 years, increasing by just 9.6%. A big reason is that married couples, who fare better economically than their single counterparts, have been a rapidly decreasing proportion of total families. In this same 20 year period, and largely because of changes in family structure, family income inequality has increased significantly. ^(e)

Research has shown consistently that both divorce and unmarried childbearing increase child poverty.  In recent years the majority of children who grow up outside of married families have experienced at least one year of dire poverty. ^(f) According to one study, if family structure had not changed between 1960 and 1998, the black child poverty rate in 1998 would have been 28.4% rather than 45.6%, and the white child poverty rate would have been 11.4% rather than 15.4%.^(g) The rise in child poverty, of course, generates significant public costs in health and welfare programs. 

Marriages that end in divorce also are very costly to the public.  One researcher determined that a single divorce costs state and federal governments about $30,000, based on such things as the higher use of food stamps and public housing as well as increased bankruptcies and juvenile delinquency.  The nation’s 1.4 million divorces in 2002 are estimated to have cost the taxpayers more than $30 billion. ^(h)

a Janet Wilmoth and Gregor Koso, “Does Marital History Matter? Marital Status and Wealth Outcomes Among Preretirement Adults,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 64:254-68, 2002.

b Thomas A. Hirschl, Joyce Altobelli, and Mark R. Rank, “Does Marriage Increase the Odds of Affluence? Exploring the Life Course Probabilities,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 65-4 (2003): 927-938;    Joseph Lupton and James P. Smith, “Marriage, Assets and Savings,” in Shoshana A. Grossbard-Schectman (ed.) Marriage and the Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 129-152.

c Jeffrey S. Gray and Michael J. Vanderhart, “The Determination of Wages: Does Marriage Matter?,” in Linda Waite, et. al. (eds.) The Ties that Bind: Perspectives on Marriage and Cohabitation (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000): 356-367;  S. Korenman and D. Neumark, “Does Marriage Really Make Men More Productive?” Journal of Human Resources 26-2 (1991): 282-307;  K. Daniel, “The Marriage Premium,” in M. Tomassi and K Ierulli (eds.) The New Economics of Human Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 113-125.

d Lingxin Hao, “Family Structure, Private Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children,” Social Forces 75 (1996): 269-292.

e U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P60-203, Measuring 50 Years of Economic Change Using the March Current Population Survey, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1998; John Iceland, “Why Poverty Remains High: The Role of Income Growth, Economic Inequality, and Changes in Family Structure, 1949-1999,” Demography 40-3:499-519, 2003.

f Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschl, “The Economic Risk of Childhood in America: Estimating the Probability of Poverty Across the Formative Years,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 61:1058-1067, 1999.

g Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill, “For Richer or For Poorer: Marriage as an Antipoverty Strategy,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 21:4, 2002.

h David Schramm, “The Costly Consequences of Divorce in Utah: The Impact on Couples, Community, and Government,” Logan, UT: Utah State University, 2003. Unpublished preliminary report.

DIVORCE

Key Finding: The American divorce rate today is nearly twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting the highest point in our history in the early 1980s.  For the average couple marrying in recent years, the lifetime probability of divorce or separation remains between 40 and 50 percent.

The increase in divorce, shown by the trend reported in Figure 5, probably has elicited more concern and discussion than any other family-related trend in the United States. Although the long-term trend in divorce has been upward since colonial times, the divorce rate was level for about two decades after World War II during the period of high fertility known as the baby boom. By the middle of the 1960s, however, the incidence of divorce started to increase and it more than doubled over the next fifteen years to reach an historical high point in the early 1980s. Since then the divorce rate has modestly declined, a trend described by many experts as "leveling off at a high level." The decline apparently represents a slight increase in marital stability.(1) Two probable reasons for this are an increase in the age at which people marry for the first time, and a higher educational level of those marrying, both of which are associated with greater marital stability. (2)

Although a majority of divorced persons eventually remarry, the growth of divorce has led to a steep increase in the percentage of all adults who are currently divorced (Figure 6). This percentage, which was only 1.8 percent for males and 2.6 percent for females in 1960, quadrupled by the year 2000. The percentage of divorced is higher for females than for males primarily because divorced men are more likely to remarry than divorced women. Also, among those who do remarry, men generally do so sooner than women.

Overall, the chances remain very high—estimated between 40 and 50 percent—that a marriage started in recent years will end in either divorce or separation before one partner dies. (3) (But see the accompanying box: "Your Chances of Divorce May Be Much Lower Than You Think.") The likelihood of divorce has varied considerably among different segments of the American population, being higher for Blacks than for Whites, for instance, and higher in the West than in other parts of the country. But these variations have been diminishing. The trend toward a greater similarity of divorce rates between Whites and Blacks is largely attributable to the fact that fewer blacks are marrying. (4) Divorce rates in the South and Midwest have come to resemble those in the West, for reasons that are not well understood, leaving only the Eastern Seaboard and the Central Plains with significantly lower divorce.

At the same time, there has been little change in such traditionally large divorce rate differences as between those who marry when they are teenagers compared to those who marry after age 21, high-school drop outs versus college graduates, and the non-religious compared to the religiously committed. Teenagers, high-school drop outs, and the non-religious who marry have considerably higher divorce rates. (5)

1 Joshua R. Goldstein, "The Leveling of Divorce in the United States," Demography 36 (1999): 409-414

2 Tim B. Heaton, “Factors Contributing to Increased Marital Stability in the United States,” Journal of Family Issues 23 (2002): 392-409

3 Robert Schoen and Nicola Standish, "The Retrenchment of Marriage: Results from Marital Status Life Tables for the United States, 1995," Population and Development Review 27-3 (2001): 553-563;  R. Kelly Raley and Larry Bumpass, “The Topography of the Divorce Plateau: Levels and Trends in Union Stability in the United States after 1980,” Demographic Research 8-8 (2003): 245-259

4 Jay D. Teachman, “Stability across Cohorts in Divorce Risk Factors,” Demography 39-2 (2002): 331-351

5 Raley and Bumpass, 2003

YOUR CHANCES OF DIVORCE MAY BE MUCH LOWER THAN YOU THINK

By now almost everyone has heard that the national divorce rate is close to 50% of all marriages.  This is true, but the rate must be interpreted with caution and several important caveats.  For many people, the actual chances of divorce are far below 50/50.

The background characteristics of people entering a marriage have major implications for their risk of divorce.  Here are some percentage point decreases in the risk of divorce or separation during the first ten years of marriage, according to various personal and social factors^(a):

                                                                                                            Percent Decrease

Factors                                                                                                in Risk of Divorce

Annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000)                                             -30

Having a baby seven months or more after marriage (vs. before marriage)          -24

Marrying over 25 years of age (vs. under 18)                                                    -24

Own family of origin intact (vs. divorced parents)                                               -14

Religious affiliation (vs. none)                                                                -14

Some college (vs. high-school dropout)                                                 -13        

So if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after age twenty five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed.

Also, it should be realized that the “close to 50%” divorce rate refers to the percentage of marriages entered into during a particular year that are projected to end in divorce or separation before one spouse dies.  Such projections assume that the divorce and death rates occurring that year will continue indefinitely into the future—an assumption that is useful more as an indicator of the instability of marriages in the recent past than as a predictor of future events.  In fact, the divorce rate has been dropping, slowly, since reaching a peak around 1980, and the rate could be lower (or higher) in the future than it is today. ^(b)

a Matthew D. Bramlett and William D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics, 23 (22), 2002. The risks are calculated for women only.

b Rose M. Kreider and Jason M. Fields, “Number, Timing and Duration of Marriages and Divorces, 1996,” Current Population Reports, P70-80, Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2002.