In 2022, the marriage rate in the United States stood at *** per 1,000 people of the population. This is a decrease from 1990 levels, when the marriage rate was *** marriages per 1,000 people. Marriage Marriage is a union that can legally, culturally, and financially bind two people. Marriage occurs between all genders, races, and cultures, and is often drastically different all around the world, due to the diversity of cultures and religions. Marriage can be recognized by a state, religious authority, or an organization. Typically viewed as a contract, it brings people together through a multitude of avenues. A part of marriage is the wedding, for which couples can decide to partake in or not. Weddings are also incredibly diverse and vary in time, money, and customs. Marriage in the United States Marriage in the United States is viewed differently across all 50 states. The number of married couples in the United States has been steadily increasing since 1960. On the other hand, the divorce rate in the United States has decreased since 1990. Nevada was the state in 2021 that had the highest marriage rate in the United States, due to easy accessibility to get married there. In 2021, Nevada was also the state with the highest divorce rate in the country.

Content

World Marriage Data 2012 provides a comparable and up-to-date set of data on the marital status of the population for all countries and areas of the world. Data are presented for the closest date available around five reference dates: the years closest to 1970, 1985, 1995, 2005 and the most recent data available.

Acknowledgements

I have pulled this data from the United Nations Data portal, did some simple post-processing to make it more user-friendly.

Inspiration

I primarily feel this data will be useful in conjunction with other datasets related to different disciplines wherein understanding the marriage trends will add value to the analysis.

Annual statistics on the number of marriages and marriage rates. Statistics are also included on the day, month and quarter of occurrence. Some tables provide data back to 1837.

How many married couples are in the U.S.? In 2023, there were 62.18 million married couples in the United States. This is an increase from 40.2 million married couples in 1960. Marriage in the U.S. While the number of married couples in the U.S. has increased in the past few decades, this could very well just be due to population change, since while the U.S. population has been increasing, the marriage rate has decreased significantly since 1990. In addition, the divorce rate has almost halved since 1990 despite concerns that more people are getting divorced than in years past. Same-sex marriage in the U.S. After years of advocacy, same-sex marriage became legal in the United States in June 2015. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in a landmark ruling in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2015, a clear majority of Americans were in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage, and approval has only been increasing in the years since.

This file contains demographic data for marriages occurring in the United States during the 1986 calendar year. The data were taken from marriage certificates registered with the vital statistics offices of 42 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The certificates for each state were chosen at one of five sampling rates (5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 percent), depending on the total number of marriages performed in the state during the year. Each record includes a weight factor based on the sampling fraction of the reporting state. The demographic data collected include age, race, previous marital status, number of this marriage, education, and natality of both the bride and groom. Information about the marriage ceremony itself includes the month, day, and week of the marriage, and the type of ceremony.

Number of divorces and divorce rate per 1,000 marriages, by duration of marriage and place of occurrence, 1970 to most recent year.

Germany Vital Statistics: Marriage data was reported at 9,258.000 Person in Jan 2025. This records a decrease from the previous number of 25,035.000 Person for Dec 2024. Germany Vital Statistics: Marriage data is updated monthly, averaging 36,227.000 Person from Jan 1990 (Median) to Jan 2025, with 421 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 69,578.000 Person in Aug 2008 and a record low of 7,870.000 Person in Jan 2013. Germany Vital Statistics: Marriage data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistisches Bundesamt. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Germany – Table DE.G003: Vital Statistics.

Albania Vital Statistics: Divorces: per 100 Marriages data was reported at 15.800 % in 2021. This records a decrease from the previous number of 24.400 % for 2020. Albania Vital Statistics: Divorces: per 100 Marriages data is updated yearly, averaging 13.972 % from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2021, with 32 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 26.100 % in 2019 and a record low of 5.900 % in 1997. Albania Vital Statistics: Divorces: per 100 Marriages data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Institute of Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Albania – Table AL.G003: Vital Statistics.

Statistics of marriage and divorce civilian registered

Statistics on marriages which took place in England and Wales which include figures on cohabitation before marriage. The cohort analyses provide statistics on the proportion of men and women who have ever married or remarried by certain ages by year of birth.

La Estadística de Matrimonios presenta información de los matrimonios civiles registrados en el país, por lo tanto, las uniones de hecho o por cualquier ti

This file contains demographic data for marriages occurring in the United States during the 1987 calendar year. The data were taken from marriage certificates registered with the vital statistics offices of 42 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The certificates for each state were chosen at one of five sampling rates (5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 percent), depending on the total number of marriages performed in the state during the year. Each record includes a weight factor based on the sampling fraction of the reporting state. The demographic data collected include age, race, previous marital status, number of this marriage, education, and natality of both the bride and groom. Information about the marriage ceremony itself includes the month, day, and week of the marriage, and the type of ceremony.

Armenia Vital Statistics: Year to Date: Crude Marriage Rate: per 1000 Population data was reported at 5.300 Person in Jun 2023. This records a decrease from the previous number of 5.500 Person for Mar 2023. Armenia Vital Statistics: Year to Date: Crude Marriage Rate: per 1000 Population data is updated quarterly, averaging 5.400 Person from Dec 2012 (Median) to Jun 2023, with 43 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 6.500 Person in Mar 2014 and a record low of 3.600 Person in Jun 2020. Armenia Vital Statistics: Year to Date: Crude Marriage Rate: per 1000 Population data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Armenia – Table AM.G003: Vital Statistics.

In 2022, there were 67.85 million married men and 68.45 million married women living in the United States. This is compared to 3.7 million widowed men and 11.48 million widowed women.

Marriage in the United States

Nevada had the highest marriage rate in the United States in 2021, followed by Hawaii and Montana. This can be attributed to marriage accessibility in the state. Las Vegas weddings are known for being quick, easy, and inexpensive chapel weddings. In comparison to the cheap weddings available in Las Vegas, the average expenditure for a wedding in the United States was the highest in New Jersey, clocking in at 51,000 U.S. dollars.

Same-sex marriage

The number of Americans who think that same-sex marriage should be recognized by law has more than doubled since 1996, while the number of Americans who think it should not be valid has decreased. It was not until June 26, 2015 that the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Before then, it was up to the states to decide if they allowed same-sex marriage. States in the Southeast are the most opposed to same-sex marriage, whereas the strongest support comes from Northern coastal states.

Female Marriage Rate: Per 1,000 Unmarried Resident Females: 40 - 44 data was reported at 22.400 NA in 2017. This records an increase from the previous number of 21.300 NA for 2016. Female Marriage Rate: Per 1,000 Unmarried Resident Females: 40 - 44 data is updated yearly, averaging 18.150 NA from Dec 1980 (Median) to 2017, with 38 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 26.200 NA in 1981 and a record low of 14.100 NA in 2002. Female Marriage Rate: Per 1,000 Unmarried Resident Females: 40 - 44 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Department of Statistics. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Singapore – Table SG.G007: Vital Statistics: Marriages & Divorces.

China Population: Number of Marriages data was reported at 7,682,141.000 Case in 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 6,834,972.000 Case for 2022. China Population: Number of Marriages data is updated yearly, averaging 9,210,923.500 Case from Dec 1978 (Median) to 2023, with 46 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 13,469,267.000 Case in 2013 and a record low of 5,978,171.000 Case in 1978. China Population: Number of Marriages data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Bureau of Statistics. The data is categorized under China Premium Database’s Socio-Demographic – Table CN.GA: Population: No of Marriage and Divorce.

The dataset contains the number of marriages categorized by the age groups of both the bride and the groom. Each record represents a combination of age groups for the bride and groom and the corresponding number of marriages for that combination. A marriage is the act, ceremony or process by which the legal relationship between two persons is formed. The legality of the union may be established by civil, religious or other means as recognised by the laws of the country.

As of 2025, Sri Lanka had the lowest divorce rate in the world, with 0.15 divorces per 1,000 population. Vietnam and Guatemala followed with 0.2 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants.

Mean age and median age at divorce and at marriage, for persons who divorced in a given year, by sex or gender and place of occurrence, 1970 to most recent year.

Abstract

The do-file marital_spouselinks.do combines all data on people's marital statuses and reported spouses to create the following datasets: 1. all_marital_reports - a listing of all the times an individual has reported their current marital status with the id numbers of the reported spouse(s); this listing is as reported so may include discrepancies (i.e. a 'Never married' status following a 'Married' one) 2. all_spouse_pairs_full - a listing of each time each spouse pair has been reported plus summary information on co-residency for each pair 3. all_spouse_pairs_clean_summarised - this summarises the data from all_spouse_pairs_full to give start and end dates of unions 4. marital_status_episodes - this combines data from all the sources to create episodes of marital status, each has a start and end date and a marital status, and if currently married, the spouse ids of the current spouse(s) if reported. There are several variables to indicate where each piece of information is coming from.

The first 2 datasets are made available in case people need the 'raw' data for any reason (i.e. if they only want data from one study) or if they wish to summarise the data in a different way to what is done for the last 2 datasets.

The do-file is quite complicated with many sources of data going through multiple processes to create variables in the datasets so it is not always straightforward to explain where each variable come from on the documentation. The 4 datasets build on each other and the do-file is documented throughout so anyone wanting to understand in great detail may be better off examining that. However, below is a brief description of how the datasets are created:

Marital status data are stored in the tables of the study they were collected in: AHS Adult Health Study [ahs_ahs1] CEN Census (initial CRS census) [cen_individ] CENM In-migration (CRS migration form) [crs_cenm] GP General form (filled for various reasons) [gp_gpform] SEI Socio-economic individual (annual survey from 2007 onwards) [css_sei] TBH TB household (study of household contacts of TB patients) [tb_tbh] TBO TB controls (matched controls for TB patients) [tb_tbo & tb_tboto2007] TBX TB cases (TB patients) [tb_tbx & tb_tbxto2007] In many of the above surveys as well as their current marital status, people were asked to report their current and past spouses along with (sometimes) some information about the marriage (start/end year etc.). These data are stored all together on the table gen_spouse, with variables indicating which study the data came from. Further evidence of spousal relationships is taken from gen_identity (if a couple appear as co-parents to a CRS member) and from crs_residency_episodes_clean_poly, a combined dataset (if they are living in the same household at the same time). Note that co-parent couples who are not reported in gen_spouse are only retained in the datasets if they have co-resident episodes.

The marital status data are appended together and the spouse id data merged in. Minimal data editing/cleaning is carried out. As the spouse data are in long format, this dataset is reshaped wide to have one line per marital status report (polygamy in the area allows for men to have multiple spouses at one time): this dataset is saved as all_marital_reports.

The list of reported spouses on gen_spouse is appended to a list of co-parents (from gen_identity) and this list is cleaned to try to identify and remove obvious id errors (incestuous links, same sex [these are not reported in this culture] and large age difference). Data reported by men and women are compared and variables created to show whether one or both of the couple report the union. Many records have information on start and end year of marriage, and all have the date the union was reported. This listing is compared to data from residency episodes to add dates that couples were living together (not all have start/end dates so this is to try to supplement this), in addition the dates that each member of the couple was last known to be alive or first known to be dead are added (from the residency data as well). This dataset with all the records available for each spouse pair is saved as all_spouse_pairs_full.

The date data from all_spouse_pairs_full are then summarised to get one line per couple with earliest and latest known married date for all, and, if available, marriage and separation date. For each date there are also variables created to indicate the source of the data.
As culture only allows for women having one spouse at a time, records for women with 'overlapping' husbands are cleaned. This dataset is then saved as all_spouse_pairs_clean_summarised.

Both the cleaned spouse pairs and the cleaned marital status datasets are converted into episodes: the spouse listing using the marriage or first known married date as the beginning and the last known married plus a year or separation date as the end, the marital status data records collapsed into periods of the same status being reported (following some cleaning to remove impossible reports) and the start date being the first of these reports, the end date being the last of the reports plus a year. These episodes are appended together and a series of processes run several times to remove overalapping episodes. To be able to assign specific spouse ids to each married episode, some episodes need to be 'split' into more than one (i.e. if a man is married to one woman from 2005 to 2017 and then marries another woman in 2008 and remains married to her till 2017 his intial married episode would be from 2005 to 2017, but this would need to be split into one from 2005 to 2008 which would just have 1 idspouse attached and another from 2008 to 2017, which would have 2 idspouse attached). After this splitting process the spouse ids are merged in.
The final episode dataset is saved as marital_status_episodes.

Analysis unit

Individual

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]