10 Shocking Statistics About People Who Marry Young

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Marriage is a beautiful constitution that can happen when you’re young or old; which makes me wonder what statistics there are about people who do marry young. I did a little bit of research and found some really exciting facts and statistics.

What are the 21 shocking statistics about people who marry young? There are a lot of crazy and shocking things to learn about young couples, but here are the first five exciting facts:

In 1960 72% of people ages 18-29 were married, in 2010 this number had decreased by 21%.
In 2018 only 44% of people got married young
Divorce rates are higher in couples that get married young
Couples who marry young get to spend more time with each other
Young married couples can beat the statistics against them

There are so many amazing things to learn about young married couples, and although some of them are not that great there are so many facts that are upbeat and support all the young married couples out there.

The 10 Shocking Statistics About People Who Marry Young

Some people ask the question “Why in the world would someone get married young? ” While lots of people ask, “Why not get married young?” The proper age to get married is contriversial and almost everyone has an opinion on when it should or shouldn’t happen.

I did some research and found 10 statistics and facts that both support young marriages and also show how they can be problematic. This was an interesting project for me to work on because I got married “young” at age 22 and there are a lot of people out there who don’t agree with that decision.

So here are our 10 shocking facts about young married couples.

In 1960 72% of people ages 18-29 were married, in 2010 this number had decreased by 21%.
In 2018 only 44% of people got married young
Divorce rates are higher in couples that get married young
Couples who marry young get to spend more time with each other
Young married couples can beat the statistics against them
Parents biggest fear about their kids getting married young is that they will have kids young
People are prejudice against young married couples
Young married couples have more opportunities to grow and learn together
47 countries out of the 133 that were surveyed have an average age of marriage that is 24 or less
Getting married young has started diminished as marriage has started to diminish

Don’t worry, this list has a lot more shocks to uncover as we delve more deeply into each subject and learn what it can teach us.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
Mignon McLaughlin

Why Did Marriage in Ages 18-29 Decrease 21% from 1960 to 2010?

It’s not unknown that marrying early is not a foreign concept for the world. Back in the 1600’s-1700’s it was very common for women of wealth to get married extremely young.

This trend continued and morphed as the years went by but it still lingered around even in the 1960s. Young couples were so common that 72 percent of the population in the United States was married between the ages of 18 to 29.

This dramatic drop is huge and lots of people wonder why such a change has occurred in marriage. There have been a lot of cultural changes and advancements that have played their part in this changing norm.

Having more women in the workforce has surely made an impact on the marrying age in the United States. As women focus on school and on getting a stable job, the need or desire to marry has been set back as a goal to achieve after school and work.
The commonality of couples living together before getting married has added to the increase of later aged marriages. Lots of couples like to spend time together cohabiting before they get married. Testing out whether or not they are compatible for marriage as they share rent, chores, and home life responsibilities.
It has become more acceptable for couples to have children outside of marriage which has actually influenced the age of marriage. Allowing people to have children without the expectation of getting married after.
The smaller American family has played a big role in increasing the age of marriage in the United States. Couples in the 1960s averaged having 3 or more children, while couples now average having less than 2. Having fewer kids means you don’t have to start having kids as early, which means that people can marry later in life.

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person.
You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time.
Julia Child

The Number of Young Married Couples is Still Dropping in the United States

The age of marriage has dropped considerably, even from 2010 to 2018. In 2010 51 percent of people still got married young in 2018 that number dropped to 44 percent which is a 7 percent decrease in just 8 years.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers shift and change in the next 8-10 years. It is intriguing to wonder if they will plateau and stay the same, if they will continue to slowly decrease, or if there will be a surge and they will start to rise again.

Even the statistics on individual states have changed throughout the year. The current age for marriage in the 50 different states are:

State	Women	Men
Alabama	25.8	27.4
Alaska	25.0	27.4
Arkansas	24.8	26.3
Arizona	26.2	28.1
California	27.3	29.5
Colorado	26.1	28.0
Delaware	26.9	29.0
Florida	27.2	29.4
Georgia	26.3	28.3
Hawaii	26.7	28.6
Idaho	24.0	25.8
Illinois	27.5	29.3
Indiana	26.1	27.4
Iowa	25.8	27.4
Kansas	25.5	27.0
Kentucky	25.4	27.1
Louisiana	26.6	28.2
Maine	26.8	28.6
Maryland	27.7	29.5
Massachusetts	28.8	30.1
Michigan	26.9	28.9
Minnesota	26.6	28.5
Mississippi	26.0	27.5
Missouri	26.1	27.6
Montana	25.7	28.5
Nebraska	25.7	27.2
Nevada	26.2	28.1
New Hampshire	26.8	29.3
New Jersey	28.1	30.1
New Mexico	26.1	28.1
New York	28.8	30.3
North Carolina	26.3	27.9
North Dakota	25.9	27.5
Ohio	26.6	28.4
Oklahoma	24.8	26.3
Oregon	26.4	28.5
Pennsylvania	27.6	29.3
Rhode Island	28.2	30.0
South Carolina	26.7	28.2
South Dakota	25.5	27.0
Tennessee	25.7	27.3
Texas	25.7	27.5
Utah	23.5	25.6
Vermont	28.8	29.3
Virginia	26.7	28.6
Washington	26.0	27.9
Washington DC	29.8	30.6
West Virginia	27.3	25.7
Wisconsin	26.6	28.4
Wyoming	24.5	26.8

While there are a few countries that still marry young like Texas, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Mississippi, Iowa, Nebraska, and a few more, the majority of states have an average age of marriage in the late twenties and early thirties which have added to the decline in young marriages.

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
Martin Luther

Did You Know Divorce Rates are Higher in Couples that Get Married Young?

A big complaint that people have about young couples is that the divorce rate in those marriages is higher than in marriages in that are couple who are in their late twenties through to their late thirties.

Studies seem to agree with this as it has been discovered in multiple different research studies that the divorce trends are higher in those young couples than in more advanced couples.

Age	Women	Men
35-40 Years Old	5 Percent	7 Percent
30-34 Years Old	9 Percent	12 Percent
25-29 Years Old	16 Percent	22 Percent
20-24 Years Old	37 Percent	39 Percent
Under the age of 20	28 Percent	12 Percent

Although for a while young couples were causing divorce rates to rise there are new studies and new data coming out which might say that this trend is changing.

A study done by sociology professor Philip Cohen for the University of Maryland says that generation X and the millennial generation are now driving the divorce rate down.

As more studies and research go into these younger generations we might just find that young couples are beginning to stay happy and married. Driving the divorce rate down.

“Where there is love, there is life.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

Couples Who Marry Young Get to Spend More Time With Each Other

It seems almost like a given to say that couple who marry younger spend more time together. Obviously, if you meet at age 20 and are married younger you’ll spend more time together than if you had met and got married older.

One of the perks of being married younger though is that you have more time to spend together daily than you would if you marry at an older age. Which is definitely a plus for me.

This is a passing phase but one that can and should be enjoyed. Young married couples have the unique responsibilities of school plus work, but they also get a pass from housework, children, and other distractions that can lessen the uninterrupted time a couple spends together.

This is not always the case and doesn’t necessarily last long, but because of their wealth status and moments of free time young couples might just be able to spend a little bit more time together being together than older couples.

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate. Then when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

– Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Young Married Couples Can Beat the Negative Statistics

There are a lot of negative feelings and statistics that kind of route against them. As well as getting the blame for high divorce rates, it can be a challenge for young married couples to feel like they can make it.

They should feel happy though because even though marriage rates in young married couples are higher, 64 percent of all young married couples stay married.

Meaning that there are more than double the success stories for young married couples than there is the fear of getting divorced. Like any couple at any age, if you stick it through any marriage can last.

one author, speaking on how young married couples benefit from a young marriage, said,

“They develop together, and grow from childhood into adulthood together, and are uniquely suited to take on the obstacles that life throws at them, together.”
Rebecca Mercy

There are unique challenges that come with deciding to get married at a young age, but there is also a huge pool of exciting blessings that can come from young marriages. One of those exciting gifts is the fact that you get to face all of life together.

What are Parents Biggest Fears About Their Kids Marrying Young?

We have all seen great movies like Father of the Bride and Monster-in-Law, where parents are portrayed as doing everything they can to stop their children from getting married.

These movies are hilarious but also play on a big fear that is common among a lot of parents. The question becomes though, “Why do parents fear their children get married?”

Well as for parents who have kids that marry at a young age, their biggest fear is that they will begin to have their own kids at too young of an age as well.

This is fear is more common that people think, but the great thing about the situation is that their kids will always have their parents to look to for help with raising their kids.

“Can they call me “Aunt Viola” instead of “Grandma”?”
Viola: Monster-in-Law

People are Prejudiced Against Young Married Couples

It surprised me a lot while I was doing research that there is a lot of prejudice against couples that decide to get married at a younger age than what is deemed “normal” in society.

There were countless stories after stories of young married couples talking about the trials they faced because people judged them for their decision to get married young.

I was biased when I heard this because I too got married young and so for me, it was hard to read about all the abuse that some of these couples had taken for their choice to get married.

Luckily all of them stayed happily married and still are to this day, but that doesn’t mean that this prejudice is correct. Like any prejudice we should work hard as a community to dislodge and resolve these prejudices so that we aren’t judging and harrasing one another.

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
– Dr. Seuss

It is easy to look at young couples and think that they have no idea what they are getting into and that they will never last. It is easy to say that they can’t really know each other because they don’t even know themselves yet.

But the really scaring thing is, that we as humans never can really know ourselves because we are continually changing and becoming someone else. Everyday.

Psychologists have been saying for years that a personality is never fully developed because it is always developing. So no matter th age at which a person gets married, they are no closer to finding themselves.

The whole point of marriage as an institution is to grow together and to continually fall in love with the new people you are becoming. If we taught our young married couples about this instead of chastising them for the age in which they have chosen to get married then maybe more of these couples would learn how to work out their marriages.

Is it True That Young Married Couples Have More Opportunities to Grow and Learn Together?

There is a myth out there that couples that are married when they are young have more opportunities to grow and learn together, but is it true or not?

There is a lot of debate on this subject with some people thinking that all couples go through trials and hard times, so you can’t compare whether or not couples have more trials than others.

That being said it is argued on the other side that the more time that is spent together the more trials that you experience together which allows you to grow together longer. Meaning that younger couples would have more opportunitues to grow and learn together because they spend more time together married.

Neither of these sides or opinions can be proved correct or false at this point, but there is solace in knowing that couples who decide to get married young will have unique and special challenges that will help them grow together.

Hopefully because of that these couples will be able to become part of the 64 percent and spend long and happy lives growing and learning together throughout the years.

There is this belief in society that it is age or socioeconomic status that is guiding and enforcing the divorce rates in the United States when really it is the new American mindset that is pushing these numbers higher and higher.

Previously in the United States and throughout the world, there was the social expectation that couples would fight through the hard times and stick with their partner.

If we work hard on protecting marriages no matter the age at which they are entered into, we will be helping and supporting the most important factor of our great countries’ society.

With the growth and development with technology and women’s rights (especially in the workplace) divorce has become way more common. This is due to a lot of things but I think technology and work play a large role.

As we get more and more used to the instant gratification of technology, and the replaceable aspect of most things in our lives, people are starting to bleed this into their relationships.

If it isn’t bringing instant gratification into our lives, if it is messy sometimes, if it takes work to fix and grow then we don’t want it. We can just find something newer and better and replace that old relationship.

This mindset has not been healthy for the divorce rates that we are experiencing. Not to mention that it is not a healthy way to live our lives and to find real happiness.

With work and women in the workforce (which I am all for) it has also caused damage when it is put before the strength and health of your marriage. This goes to both genders.

It seems like like when both members of the couple are working they both tend to focus to much on work and not enough on their relationship, so it becomes almost a business deal. And business deals are so easy to end when they start needing more work than you’re willing to put into it.

Now, there have been good things to come from this and that is, that women will not be pushed around anymore. They have the ability to get out of unhealthy relationships now when they didn’t really have that ability in the past.

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness–and call it love–true love.”
– Robert Fulghum, True Love

How Many Countries Think it is Normal to Marry Young?

Way, way, back many, many, centuries ago marriage customs were different and were held to different standards. It wasn’t uncommon for women born into wealthy parents to get married at younger ages.

Also when lifespans weren’t as long it was more common for marriages to be performed at younger ages. It would have been difficult to get married at age 30 when you were lucky to live to age 50.

That being said it isn’t as common now for couples to get married at young ages, but they did a pole of 133 countries to try and figure out the marriage rates of young couple globally and 47 countries have couples that get married at age 24 or less.

On the opposit end of the spectrum, there were many continents that had low and even very low amounts of young marriages. It seems that more developed continents tended to marry older than other less developed continents.

This causes quite a few questions to arise, but the only one answered right now in this article is, “Which continent has the least amount of young marriages?”

The continent with the least amount of young couples was Europe, whose number of older couples was astronomically larger than the numbers for all other continents.

That being said, both North America and South America were not surveyed completely and so those continents could not be counted in this survey. So, we can’t truly count until those questions have been answered.

It is so interesting to find the different countries and continents that have a younger marriage norm and finding the countries and continents that don’t have very young marriages.

“What is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
– Victor Hugo

Marriage and Marrying Young are Correlated

As we have discovered in most of the modern world young marriages have started diminishing. This seems to be because of a number of different reasons, but one of the main reasons seems shocking.

One of the biggest reasons that young marriages have started diminishing throughout society is that marriage as an institution has started diminishing.

The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year. Since then, however, the total number of people getting married has fallen steadily. Now only about two million marriages happen a year, a drop of almost half a million from their peak.

As a result, barely more than half of adults in the U.S. say they’re living with a spouse. It is the lowest share on record, and down from 70 percent in 1967.
The Eclectic Economist

Some people are under the impression that the number of marriages between young people is getting smaller because people have learned better and are moving on, but that isn’t the main reason.

Marriage rates, in general, are at the lowest that they have been in the past 150 years. This makes it a lot harder to say that fewer people are marrying young on its own when the real truth is that fewer people are marrying in general.

In society, we have shifted the focus from marriage and families to work and co-workers. Until society shifts back towards marriage there will continue to be a decline in marriages all around the United States and the World.

So one of the most shocking and well-kept statistics about young marriage is that young marriage isn’t on the decline all on its own, it is joined by the institution of marriage altogether.