The global crude marriage rate fell from 8.2 marriages per 1,000 people in 1970 to roughly 4.9 by 2020, a decline of more than 40 percent in exactly fifty years. Read on its own, that number tells a simple story of marriage in retreat. But a second measure, the share of women married or in a union at any given time, moved far less over the same period, from 69 percent in 1970 to 64 percent in 2024. Marriage is not disappearing nearly as fast as the headline decline in marriage rates suggests. What has changed dramatically is when people marry, not just how many eventually do.
Is Marriage Actually Declining Worldwide?
The answer depends entirely on which measure is used, and conflating them is the most common error in popular writing about this topic. The crude marriage rate counts new marriages performed in a given year per 1,000 people; it is highly sensitive to the age structure of the population and to short-term disruptions. The share of women currently married or in a union measures a stock, not a flow, and captures whether people eventually partner at all, regardless of when.
By the flow measure, the decline looks steep: the global crude marriage rate stood at approximately 5.1 per 1,000 in 2019 according to UN data, already well down from 1970s levels, and it fell further still during the COVID-19 pandemic. By the stock measure, the decline looks modest: roughly two-thirds of the world’s women have been married or in a union at any point over the last five decades, a share that has eroded only gradually.
A third measure adds important nuance to both: the share of adults who have ever married by a given age. Pew Research data cited in recent compilations show that 95 percent of adults aged 30 to 49 worldwide were ever-married in 1970, falling to about 85 percent by 2017.
UN estimates suggest the share of never-married adults aged 25 to 54 rose from roughly 20 percent to 35 percent globally between 1990 and 2020. These numbers point toward a genuine, if more moderate, decline in the share of people who ever marry, layered on top of the much larger shift toward later marriage.
Where Marriage Rates Are Falling
The European Union’s crude marriage rate fell from about 8 per 1,000 in the 1960s to 4.0 by 2023, tracking the same downward trajectory documented globally. Within OECD countries, the average marriage rate dropped by 25 percent in 2020 alone as COVID-19 restrictions disrupted weddings, then rebounded by about 10 percent in 2021 as restrictions eased, without fully returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Singapore’s national statistics illustrate the pattern in granular detail: total marriages fell 7.0 percent from 28,310 in 2023 to 26,328 in 2024, and the general marriage rate, marriages per 1,000 unmarried people aged 15 to 49, fell for both sexes over the preceding decade, from 44.4 to 42.0 for men and from 40.8 to 40.1 for women between 2014 and 2024.
Selected Crude Marriage Rates by Country (Marriages per 1,000 Population)
| Country/Region | Crude Marriage Rate | Year |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 6.1 | recent |
| Romania | 5.8 | recent |
| Latvia | 5.6 | recent |
| Hungary | 5.2 | recent |
| European Union average | 4.0 | 2023 |
| Global average | ~4.9 | 2020 |
| Several MENA countries | above 7.0 | recent |
Sources: OECD Family Database; Our World in Data; onlinemftprograms.com compilation of national statistics.
Marriage rates are not uniformly low everywhere. Several Middle Eastern and North African countries report rates above 7 per 1,000, well above the EU and global averages, illustrating that the marriage decline documented in Europe, East Asia and North America is not a universal pattern applied equally around the world.
People Are Also Marrying Later
This is the least ambiguous trend in the entire dataset. OECD data show the average age at first marriage rising to close to 32 for women and 34 for men by 2021 across member countries, up substantially from earlier decades when marrying in the early-to-mid twenties was standard practice in most of the countries now tracked by the OECD. Singapore’s 2024 data confirm the same direction: median age at first marriage rose from 30.2 to 31.1 for grooms and from 28.2 to 29.6 for brides between 2014 and 2024.
The U.S. crude marriage rate peaked at about 12.2 per 1,000 people in 1972 and has fallen to some of the lowest levels on record since, a decline that accelerated slightly during the pandemic and has not meaningfully reversed.
Why Marriage Patterns Are Changing
Several forces operate together rather than in isolation:
- Economic independence. Rising female labor force participation and income have reduced the economic necessity of marriage as a pathway to financial security in many countries.
- Education. Longer time spent in education delays the point at which many people are ready, financially or otherwise, to marry.
- Housing costs. In many higher-income countries, the cost of establishing an independent household is frequently cited as a factor delaying marriage, alongside its well-documented effect on delaying parenthood.
- Delayed parenthood. As childbearing itself moves later, the social pressure to marry before having children has weakened in societies where the two are not tightly linked by law or strong social norm.
- Changing norms and legal recognition. Rising social acceptance of long-term cohabitation without marriage, along with expanding legal recognition of unmarried partnerships in some countries, has reduced the practical necessity of formal marriage for many couples.
Marriage and Childbearing Are Becoming Less Closely Linked in Some Countries
OECD data document rising same-sex marriage as one visible marker of how marriage itself has evolved as an institution: no OECD country recognized same-sex marriage in 1999, but by 2022, 25 OECD countries formally recognized it in at least part of their territory, and same-sex marriages represented an average of 2.2 percent of all marriages across 20 OECD countries with available data in 2021-22, ranging from 1.2 percent in Iceland to more than 3 percent in Australia and the United Kingdom. In a related shift, births outside marriage have become common in many OECD countries, a separate indicator that shows how far childbearing has decoupled from marriage in some societies even as it remains tightly linked in others.
Where Marriage Remains Central to Family Formation
The picture is far from uniform globally. In many countries across South Asia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, marriage remains closely tied to childbearing, and the share of women married or in a union at reproductive ages remains high relative to Europe and East Asia. The modest global decline in the share of women married or in a union, from 69 percent in 1970 to 64 percent in 2024, is consistent with a pattern in which some regions have moved sharply away from marriage as a near-universal institution while others have changed much more slowly.
What Lower Marriage Rates Mean for Demography
Declining and delayed marriage interacts directly with the broader fertility decline documented elsewhere in demographic research, since later marriage generally compresses the window available for childbearing in societies where births remain closely tied to marital status. It also feeds into the household composition changes visible worldwide: delayed marriage extends the period young adults spend in one-person or shared, non-family households, while declining marriage rates overall contribute to the long-term rise in one-person households recorded across aging, wealthy societies.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are marriage rates falling worldwide?
Yes, by the most common measure. The global crude marriage rate fell from about 8.2 per 1,000 people in 1970 to roughly 4.9 by 2020, though the share of women ever married or in a union has declined far more modestly, from 69 percent to 64 percent over roughly the same period.
2. What country has the lowest marriage rate?
Rates vary by measurement year and are not consistently tracked across all countries, but several European countries with aging populations and long-established later-marriage norms, rather than any single record-holder, consistently post some of the lowest crude marriage rates in available OECD data.
3. Why are people marrying later?
Rising education levels, greater female economic independence, higher housing costs and changing social norms around cohabitation have all contributed to average age at first marriage rising to around 32 for women and 34 for men across OECD countries by 2021.
4. Are fewer people getting married than previous generations?
The share of adults who ever marry has fallen only moderately, from about 95 percent of 30-to-49-year-olds in 1970 to roughly 85 percent by 2017, while the share of never-married adults aged 25 to 54 nearly doubled globally between 1990 and 2020.
5. How much did COVID-19 affect global marriage rates?
Significantly in the short term. OECD countries saw marriage rates fall by an average of 25 percent in 2020, before rebounding by about 10 percent in 2021, without fully returning to pre-pandemic levels in most countries.
6. Is marriage declining everywhere in the world?
No. The decline is sharpest in Europe, North America and parts of East Asia. Several countries in the Middle East and North Africa report marriage rates above 7 per 1,000, well above the EU average of 4.0 in 2023.
7. What is the difference between crude marriage rate and marriage prevalence?
The crude marriage rate measures new marriages performed per 1,000 people in a single year, a flow measure sensitive to short-term disruption. Marriage prevalence measures the share of a population currently married or in a union at a point in time, a stock measure that changes much more slowly.
8. How has same-sex marriage affected global marriage statistics?
Modestly in scale but significantly as an institutional shift. Same-sex marriages represented about 2.2 percent of all marriages across 20 OECD countries with available data in 2021-22, following rapid legal recognition that expanded from zero OECD countries in 1999 to 25 by 2022.
9. Does later marriage mean fewer children?
It can, in societies where childbearing remains closely tied to marriage, since a later marriage age compresses the number of reproductive years available within marriage, though the relationship is weaker in countries where births outside marriage are common.
10. What was the average age of first marriage decades ago compared with today?
A few decades ago, the average woman across many tracked countries married in her early-to-mid twenties; by 2021, OECD data show the average age at first marriage had risen to close to 32 for women and 34 for men.
Sources
- Our World in Data, “Marriages and Divorces” and “Marriage rates,” based on OECD Family Database, US Census Bureau and CDC data
- OECD, Society at a Glance 2024, Marriage and Divorce chapter
- Singapore Department of Statistics, Statistics on Marriages and Divorces 2024
- Gitnux, Global Marriage Statistics compilation, citing United Nations World Marriage Data and Pew Research
- onlinemftprograms.com, Global Marriage Statistics compilation of national and OECD data
- Grokipedia, List of countries by marriage rate, COVID-19 impact data compilation
