Utah boasts the most number of married-family homes…a % that actually even rose 2% in the past few years. This means Utah culture is marriage-focused in deterring divorce as couples go through their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.
Yet when we check under the hood among Utah singles, we see that the stats are moving the other way.
If you check Statemaster.com & averaged the % of unmarried by state, you’ll see 17 states have more once-married adults (%-wise) than Utah. (A couple of years ago, that was 16 states). Even Nevada has 1% more once-married women than Utah! And when you compare Utah to other Western states that also has a high Mormon population – states like Wyoming & Idaho – Utah has about 2.5% more never-married men than those states. [29% of Utah men have never married: Percent of Men Who Never Married (most recent) by state … see also Percent of Women Who Never Married (most recent) by state ]
Hence, % - wise, marriage is down even tho the actual # of marriages are still high in the state. BYU’s newspaper noted this last January:
…fewer BYU students are getting married during their college years than ever before. According to the Y Facts University Marriage Statistics page, the percentage of married students at BYU has steadily declined from 29 percent in 1992 to 25 percent in 2009. While a 4-percent drop may not seem like much, it reflects a national trend of the aging single population. Source: BYU Daily Universe: Sister missionaries and the aging single population (Jan. 22, 2010)
The thing is that marriage is HEAVILY stressed in Lds culture. How heavy?
Lds “prophet” Joseph F. Smith: ...this doctrine of the eternal union of the husband and wife and of plural marriage, is one of the most important doctrines ever revealed to man in any age of the world. Without it man would come to a full stop; without it we never could be exalted to associate with and become gods neither could we attain to the power of eternal increase... (Joseph F. Smith, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 21, pp. 9-10)
So, Lds "prophets" have said that Mormons can't "become gods" minus marriage...that's how much import is placed on marriage in Mormon culture!
BTW, if you’re wonderin when Joseph F. Smith became a Mormon “prophet” (since he mentions “plural marriage” – polygamy – above) he was the Lds “prophet” during the early 1900s – a decade after the Mormon church issued the manifesto to slow down polygamy!
What implications do these statistical trends have? Does it show men in the region who despite the tremendous cultural pressure refuse to "settle down?"