Title: Dramatic increase in the proportion of births outside of marriage in the United States from 1990 to 2016 - Child Trends
Headings: Dramatic increase in the proportion of births outside of marriage in the United States from 1990 to 2016
Dramatic increase in the proportion of births outside of marriage in the United States from 1990 to 2016
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Content: In 2012, 35 percent of black adults and 26 percent of Hispanic adults (ages 25 and older) have never been married, compared to 16 percent of white adults. Declines in marriage have been linked to a range of social and economic factors (Solomon-Fears, 2014). Increasingly, couples are waiting for economic security or stability before getting married. In this domain, nonwhites are especially disadvantaged. These economic disparities reflect, to some extent, the lasting effects of institutional and systemic racism that surface in inequitable policies, practices, and social norms. For example, given the strong tendency for people to marry same-race partners, the comparatively high levels of unemployment, underemployment, and incarceration among black men may limit the opportunity of black women to marry (Raley et al., 2015). Additionally, black women outnumber black men among the most highly educated populations, further limiting marriage opportunities and increasing the likelihood that births will occur outside of marriage (Reeves & Guyot, 2017). This may be one explanation for why one-third of births to highly educated black women (and almost half of births to highly educated black women in their twenties) are nonmarital. At the same time, however, cohabitation has increased.