Equitable Access Policy
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/29475
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Rethinking marriage metabolism: The declining frequency of marital events in the United States(Population Research and Policy Review, 2023) Cohen, Philip N.Previous research has used the concept of marriage metabolism to represent churning in the marriage system, but the measurements used to date have been inadequate. This paper addresses changes in the incidence of marital events in the United States from 2008 to 2021. I offer a measure, the Total Rate of Marital Events (TRME), of the projected lifetime experience of marital transitions (marriage, divorce, and widowhood) for life table cohorts. I find that the TRME declined steeply over this relatively short period: 22% for men and 19% for women. All three components declined in every age group below 90. The decline in divorce was most pronounced. More accurately than the term "retreat from marriage," I describe the slowing churn of the marriage system as reflecting the diminished social presence of marriage in daily life. Rather than a retreat, this coincides with the increasingly selective status of married life. A higher status marriage system is a smaller, slower, and more stable marriage system.Item Growing Uncertainty in Marriage Expectations among U.S. Youth(Socius, 2024-03-26) Cohen, Philip N.; Pepin, Joanna R.Marriage rates are falling in the United States. The authors ask whether today's young adults are likely to continue this trend. Using Monitoring the Future Public-Use Cross-Sectional Datasets (1976-2022), this visualization presents U.S. 12th graders' marriage expectations. It shows declining optimism that they will be "very good" spouses and declining expectations that they will eventually marry. Both trends are prominent in the last 10 years of the survey, and both are more dramatic among young women than among young men. If these trends hold, it may foretell further declines in marriage rates in the coming years.