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posted by mrpg on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the marry-me dept.

You’re not the only one spending fewer summer weekends watching other people get married—but don’t worry, the weddings you’re still invited to might feel a little more special these days.

Fewer Americans are getting married, and the ones who still are have scaled back their weddings. Their nuptials are becoming smaller, though not necessarily cheaper, affairs.

Many couples are waiting longer and longer to schedule their weddings. In 2015, the median first-time American bride was almost 28 years old and the median groom almost 30, according to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau. (Ten years earlier, the typical bride was 25.5, the typical groom 27.)

The U.S. marriage rate—the number of new marriages per 1,000 people—has been falling for decades. It fell especially fast during the recession, in 2008 and 2009, but there’s little evidence that people started getting married again even as the economy recovered. And research firm IbisWorld predicts the marriage rate will keep falling over the next five years.

From a global perspective, that wouldn’t be a surprise. The U.S. marriage rate would need to fall by about a third to reach the marriage rates in other developed countries. The most recent data show a U.S. marriage rate of 6.9, compared with an average rate of 4.6 for countries in the European Union.

Are weaker economics the cause, or has marriage gone out of fashion?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @04:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @04:10AM (#546970)

    There is a reason for that. The rich people of Victorian times did have elaborate marriages and full-on female politics and expensive gifts and dinners. There are multiple novels talking about people doing nothing but getting married. Victorian morals gave immense importance to chastity and longevity of marriages. The poor people though, were fully divorced from this. They used to have cheap marriages, wanton unplanned pregnancies, multiple divorces.

    In last 100 years, the poors have been 'uplifted' to rich and rich women have been 'empowered' aka feminism to demand more rights for not being allowed to act like poor women. There is that diamond business too, a one-time tangible measure of your love, along with the mental pressure of losing it all forever. Marriages are now a serious business, and hence normal people are avoiding it.