This sometimes happens—and makes me shake my head. I’m not an amateur in finding hidden data on the government’s statistical sites. In any case, in this process, I did find credible stats to reproduce the news, more or less. My figures are slightly better than reported for today and for 2000 (a higher rate of marriage)—but the trend is, alas, as reported in the media.
I got my data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey for 2003-2010 by using the table-making utility found here. I calculated data for 2000 from Table 1 in this 2000 Census report. And, running into lunch time, I extrapolated data for 2001 and 2002 to save time. Herewith I chart the data:
A decade’s worth of numbers do indeed show that marriage is at least temporarily not a life-style choice for many, approaching half of those in the age range where we tend to settle down. But in looking at this graphic I remind myself of a lesson I learned early in my long career looking through this strange lens: curves never keep on going up—or down. Sooner or later the worm turns.
