Posted on 05/09/2017 11:20:14 AM PDT by BJ1
Last year I presented a paper called "Will Millennials Ever Get Married?" at SciPy 2015. You can see video of the talk and download the paper here.
I used data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to estimate the age at first marriage for women in the U.S., broken down by decade of birth. I found evidence that women born in the 1980s and 90s were getting married later than previous cohorts, and I generated projections that suggest they are on track to stay unmarried at substantially higher rates.
Yesterday the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released a new batch of data from surveys conducted in 2013-2015. I downloaded it and updated my analysis. Also, for the first time, I apply the analysis to the data from male respondents.
Women Based on a sample of 58488 women in the U.S., here are survival curves that estimate the fraction who have never been married for each birth group (women born in the 1940s, 50s, etc) at each age.
For example, the top line represents women born in the 1990s. At age 15, none of them were married; at age 24, 81% of them are still unmarried. (The survey data runs up to 2015, so the oldest respondents in this group were interviewed at age 25, but the last year contains only partial data, so the survival curve is cut off at age 24).
For women born in the 1980s, the curve goes up to age 34, at which point about 39% of them had never been married.
Two patterns are visible in this figure. Women in each successive cohort are getting married later, and a larger fraction are never getting married at all.
By making some simple projections, we can estimate the magnitude of these effects separately. I explain the methodology in the paper. The following figure shows the survival curves from the previous figure as well as projections shown in gray
These results suggest that women born in the 1980s and 1990s are not just getting married later; they are on pace to stay unmarried at rates substantially higher than previous cohorts. In particular, women born in the 1980s seem to have leveled off; very few of them have been married between ages 30 and 34. For women born in the 1990s, it is too early to tell whether they have started to level off.
The following figure summarizes these results by taking vertical slices through the survival curves at ages 23, 33 and 43.
In this figure the x-axis is birth cohort and the y-axis is the fraction who have never married.
1) The top line shows that the fraction of women never married by age 23 has increased from 25% for women born in the 40s to 81% for women born in the 90s.
2) The fraction of women unmarried at age 33 has increased from 9% for women born in the 40s to 38% for women born in the 80s, and is projected to be 47% for women born in the 90s.
3) The fraction of women unmarried at age 43 has increased from 8% for women born in the 40s to 17% for women born in the 70s, and is projected to be 36% for women born in the 1990s.
These projections are based on simple assumptions, so we should not treat them as precise predictions, but they are not as naive as a simple straight-line extrapolations of past trends.
Men The results for men are similar but less extreme. Here are the estimated survival curves based on a sample of 24652 men in the U.S. The gray areas show 90% confidence intervals for the estimates due to sampling error.
1) At age 23, the fraction of men who have never married has increased from 66% for men born in the 50s to 88% for men born in the 90s.
2) At age 33, the fraction of unmarried men has increased from 27% to 44%, and is projected to go to 50%.
3) At age 43, the fraction of unmarried men is almost unchanged for men born in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but is projected to increase to 30% for men born in the 1990s.
Methodology The NSFG is intended to be representative of the adult U.S. population, but it uses stratified sampling to systematically oversample certain subpopulations, including teenagers and racial minorities. My analysis takes this design into account (by weighted resampling) to generate results that are representative of the population.
The survival curves are computed by Kaplan-Meier estimation, with confidence intervals computed by resampling. Missing values are filled by random choice from valid values, so the confidence intervals represent variability due to missing values as well as sampling.
To generate projections, we might consider two factors:
1) If people in the last two cohorts are postponing marriage, we might expect their marriage rates to increase or decrease more slowly.
2) If we extrapolate the trends, we might expect marriage rates to continue to fall or fall faster.
I used an alternative between these extremes: I assume that the hazard function from the previous generation will apply to the next. This takes into account the possibility of delayed marriage (since there are more unmarried people "at risk" in the projections), but it also assumes a degree of regression to past norms. In that sense, the projections are probably conservative; that is, they probably underestimate how different the last two cohorts will be from their predecessors.
So true.
In the meantime... the Fed raises their kids. It’s a pretty messed up system
Millennials are smarter than a lot of the people in their 30s who were radically fooled by leftist media. A lot of 20s and teens are seeing how OVER THE TOP the bias is, how the supposed “liberals” want to control them and take from them.
Dennis Prager is doing a good media job blasting the universities, Hannity too sometimes. Millennials should use the universities for any benefit to their careers like my son will be, and get the f outa there. My son picked a program with killer internships. There ya go, right into the heart of your desired industry, meet people, show your strengths, and get hired. No gender studies, no sociology major... get in, get on track, get out.
Whoops, I forgot to mention marriage. Millennials should get married because..... Still thinking.... let me get back to you....
Neither they nor their teachers know anything worth knowing. But it is harbinger about what type of society we may expect into our future. So it is worth caring about.
I thought they are marrying themselves
What is Sologamy? The new wedding trend of marrying yourself - all you need ...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/living/2912505/sologamy-marrying-yourself/amp/
Millidiots
In the past 3-4 years, I personally know of 5 couples - work, church, etc - where the mother had a mid-life crisis and walked away from her family. All of them involved little kids, some toddler-aged.
Granted, I don't know the entire story, but the dads in all cases seem to be decent guys.
Mrs WBill and I hear about incidents like these and are horrified. What kind of mother walks away - willingly, happily - from her kids? Little kids? I don't have the words for the contempt I feel for them.
In the 50s, women who did things like this would be outcast, and rightfully so. Now, our Brave New Liberal Society celebrates foolishness like this. "You Go Girl!!", "Who Needs A Man?" and such. Meanwhile, Dads are left to figure out what to do, and the kids wonder why Mommy doesn't want to be with them.
With charm and an attitude like that, I'm surprised American girls aren't falling into your arms.
Shoulda just knocked her off. You'd be out by now. LOL
Why would any man want to get married with the way the courts screw them over in divorce?
Fella in the bar a month or two back said, why is a divorce in California cost a million bucks... because its worth it.
Do you live in DC, Miami, New York, or similar?
Prager is telling the young guys to get married. It’s caused a fair amount of buzz in the manosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtvfHnZMcOY
Dennis has already been divorced twice but is sticking by his guns to get married and man up.
And here is a humorous reply, that is just one of many mocking him. Yeah I think the young guys are starting to mock the “man up” advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNe0yfRd-do
Why are these people so stupid?
Do they have any idea what it takes to get married, have babie$, buy mortgage$, insurance for everything, health care, cars, payments, clothing, utilities, food et al?
Those things take real good paying SECURE jobs, benefits etc. Same for the wife because she also has to work around the clock to play like they did in old America where all that was doable with just one income.
Who raised the leftists in the '60s?
How long have you been married? And what country is your wife from?
Well ...
A mother who grew up being taught that KILLING your kids is a sacred right (or rite) might consider doing that.
Bingo...So obvious they can’t see it.
We are simply following Europe into the abyss.
Extreme socialism combined with uber-low birth rates.
That means you import the Third World to do the work and pay for the aging native population. The Muslim World Revolution in action. Demography is destiny.
It seems the only ones in any hurry to get to the altar are the same-sex crowd.
I didn’t marry until 37 and have no regrets. It took a long time to find the perfect woman for me. There’s nothing wrong with being selective. Too many today, however, don’t want to pay for the cow when the milk is free.
Its a different world out there, so some of these people replying cant relate. The attitudes shoved around in our schools and popular culture for the past few decades have turned out a chunk of American women that are unfit for marriage; promoting things like not taking care of themselves, no morals and promiscuity, a “you go girl” attitude of working at compromise in a relationship, etc. The list goes on...
For decades, all these young woman who never married wanted that celebrity live style with $ to blow. What most young guys had to offer didn’t get it.
Most will die alone.
I fled Southern California a few years ago
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