Marriage and Union Formation in the United States: Recent Trends Across Racial Groups and Economic Backgrounds
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Marriage and Union Formation in the United States: Recent Trends Across Racial Groups and Economic Backgrounds Deirdre Bloome 1 & Shannon Ang 1,2 # Population Association of America 2020
Abstract Family formation in the United States has changed dramatically: marriage has become less common, nonmarital cohabitation has become more common, and racial and economic inequalities in these experiences have increased. We provide insights into recent U.S. trends by presenting cohort estimates for people born between 1970 and 1997, who began forming unions between 1985 and 2015. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics data, we find that typical ages at marriage and union formation increased faster across these recent cohorts than across cohorts born between 1940 and 1969. As fewer people married at young ages, more cohabited, but the substitution was incomplete. We project steep declines in the probability of ever marrying, declines that are larger among Black people than White people. We provide novel information on the intergenerational nature of family inequalities by measuring parental income, wealth, education, and occupational prestige. Marriage declines are particularly steep among people from low-income backgrounds. Black people are overrepresented in this low-income group because of discrimination and opportunity denial. However, marriage declines are larger among Black people than White people across parental incomes. Further, most racial differences in marriage occur among people from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Family inequalities increasingly reflect both economic inequalities and broader racial inequalities generated by racist structures; in turn, family inequalities may prolong these other inequalities across generations.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-02000910-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Deirdre Bloome [email protected] Shannon Ang [email protected]
1
Department of Sociology, Population Studies Center, and Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, USA
2
School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang, Singapore
D. Bloome, S. Ang
Keywords Marriage . Cohabitation . Racial inequality . Income inequality
Introduction Since the mid-twentieth century, U.S. men and women have delayed marriage to increasingly older ages and have become increasingly likely to cohabit with nonmarital romantic partners (Kennedy and Bumpass 2008; U.S. Census Bureau 2019). These changes in union formation (a term encompassing marriage and nonmarital cohabitation) were widespread but progressed unevenly across the population. Black people delayed marriage more than White people but increased cohabitation less (Manning 2013; Raley et al. 2015). People without college degrees both delayed marriage and increased cohabitation more than college graduates (Manning et al. 2014; Torr 2011). The concentration of marriage among advantaged demo
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