Marriage Statistics Incomplete

June 1, 1999

U.S. quits gathering marriage statistics
By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - The federal government no longer is keeping
detailed, yearly, state-by-state statistics on marriage and divorce.

Budget cuts three years ago at the National Center for Health Statistics
(NCHS) only now are being felt by researchers and demographers who
study the state of the family.

And next year, the short form of the Census - the version that more than 80% of Americans will receive - for the first time in modern times will not ask marital status.

The changes are dramatically affecting sociologists, researchers, policymakers and politicians.

"These statistics are absolutely vital to us," says Linda Waite, University of Chicago family researcher and sociologist. "They are very fundamental if we are to understand what kind of families we are living in."

The Census information still will be collected on the long form received by about 16 million people, and demographers will be able to use the answers to calculate marriage statistics for the entire country.

Still, it won't be a detailed marital head count. And some members of Congress are concerned. "We will be looking into it," says Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn. "We need this kind of information."

The cutbacks indicate "a significant point in history," says family therapist Diane Sollee of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "We are not even asking for this information anymore."

Beginning in 1996, the NCHS decided to collect only numbers of marriages and divorces yearly from the states instead of details such as when people married or divorced, how old they were, whether they had been married before or how many children they had.

That is the kind of information that demographers use to make often-quoted projections, such as the one that about half of new marriages will end in divorce.

Because of budget cuts, "we had to cut some of the activities within our data collection system," says James Weed of the NCHS. "We couldn't very well cut births and deaths, so we cut marriages and divorces."

Not all demographers are worried. Larry Bumpass, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says government information has been inadequate. He says not all states report data to the voluntary system, and they use different methods of collection.

He also says other studies are available from private and university sources as well as some Census information.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/marr-div.html


MARRIAGE STATISTICS
Latest Statistics from US Census Bureau
The latest US Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics contain updates through September, 2006. Since collection of records of total divorces ended in 1998, some charts are no longer being updated. Although the charts here are based upon the best statistics available, there are limitations. Please refer to the original statistical tables in the footnotes for known limitations.
The ratio of marriages to divorces is 2 to 1 (Marriages and Divorces).
Total Marriages showed a sharp drop in 1998.
Marital Status for Females 15 and over (1950 - 2005) shows that the population of unmarried women will soon surpass the number of married women. This indicates a rejection of the Divine Institution of Marriage by the population.
The number of Unmarried Couple Households (liveins) is increasing steadily.
Where are the children living (with one or two parents) due to divorce? Children living with only one parent has increased from 9% in 1960 to 30% (29.52%) in 2005. Of those 83% of the children live with the mother. This is creating a society of bastards.
http://www.biblenews1.com/marriage/marriags.htm


The marriage rate in the United States flirts with an all-time low.

Over the last several decades, marriage in our nation has declined, while cohabitation, divorce and unmarried childbearing have increased.
From 1970 to 1996, the marriage rate in the United States fell by a third, from 77 to 50 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women.
From 1960 to 1998, the number of unmarried, cohabiting couples increased nearly tenfold, from 439,000 to 4.2 million.
Divorce rates also increased from 9 to 23 per married couples from 1960 to 1980, before declining slightly and remaining steady at 20 per 1,000 through 1998.
Births to unmarried women increased from 11 to 33 percent of all births from 1970 to 1994, then leveled off through 1999.
Nationally, 1.3 million children are born out-of-wedlock each year.
http://www.chicagolandmarriage.org/marriage_statistics.htm