Analysis: ‘Record-High’ Share of U.S. 40-Year-Olds Have Never Been Married

A quarter (25 percent) of 40-year-olds in the United States had never been married as of 2021, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. 

“Marriage has long been a central institution in the lives of Americans. In 1980, just 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married. But people born from the 1960s onward have been increasingly delaying marriage, and a growing share are forgoing it altogether,” Pew Research Senior Researcher Richard Fry wrote. 

The 2021 data “marks a new milestone in that decades-long trend,” Fry found.

25% of U.S. 40-year-olds have never been married. That's a historic first. The previous historical high point was 1910 when 16% of U.S. 40-year-olds had never been married. https://t.co/XaJqvy7Q3c pic.twitter.com/nYfw47UsbE

— Richard Fry (@r_fry1) June 28, 2023

Census Bureau data showed that while many unmarried 40-year-olds cohabitated with a romantic partner, most were on their own. In 2022, 22 percent of adults between the ages of 40 and 44 who had never been married were cohabiting.

The percentage of 40-year-olds in 2021 who had never tied the knot differed by demographic, Fry found. Men were more likely than women to have never married, as were black 40-year-olds, compared to Hispanics, whites, and Asians of the same age.

Forty-year-olds without four-year college degrees were also more likely than those with bachelor’s degrees or higher to be unmarried.

“One-third of those with a high school diploma or less had never married, compared with 26 percent of those with some college education and 18 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education,” according to the analysis. 

In 2021, Black 40-year-olds were much more likely to have never married compared with Hispanic, White and Asian 40-year-olds. https://t.co/I4JxIBkenr pic.twitter.com/gG36hnl2SF

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) June 29, 2023

Fry wrote that the overall decline in the percentage of 40-year-olds who have said “I do” is “especially notable” because the share of 40-year-olds who have at least a bachelor’s degree was much higher in 2021 than in 1980, 39 percent to 18 percent. Even so, 40-year-olds with more education are more likely to be married, but the growth of this demographic “has not reversed the overall trend of delaying or forgoing marriage,” Fry wrote.

“To be sure, we can’t assume that if someone has not married by age 40, they never will,” Fry concluded. “In fact, about one-in-four 40-year-olds who had not married in 2001 had done so by age 60. If that pattern holds, a similar share of today’s never-married 40-year-olds will marry in the coming decades.”