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Across the country, including in Wisconsin and Milwaukee County, the number of married adults has fallen to all-time lows. If current trends continue, there could soon be more unmarried adults than married ones in the state, according to statistics released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau. Some say the age-old institution of marriage is eroding, but others argue that much of the decline is simply due to people marrying later in life.

The downward slide in the ranks of married folks has been decades in the making. In the first half of the 1960s, more than 80 percent of U.S. adults were married. Since then, changing attitudes and social trends have driven a decline in the percent of married Americans. Nationally, the percentage of married adults dropped from 57 percent in 2000 to 52 percent in 2009: Statewide, the decline was nearly identical, dropping from 57 percent to 53 percent.

In Milwaukee County, however, unmarried adults already outnumber married ones. Between 2001 and 2009, the percentage of married adults in the county dropped from 46 percent to 41.

For some, including Wisconsin Family Action, one of the state’s largest family values groups, the seemingly never-ending decline is a cause for concern. “Everyone should be alarmed that the marriage rate has dropped as much as it has. It’s truly precipitous,” says President Julaine Appling.

The organization promotes the idea that lasting marriages are a key to the state’s economic and social well-being. “One of the main causes of poverty is the breakdown of the family unit,” Appling argues. As more and more couples choose not to marry, she says, the result is more children living in poverty. “Marriage brings a unique commitment and a unique environment for children,” she says. “From a child’s perspective, there’s solidarity there and a commitment from the mom and the dad.”

But the group Alternatives to Marriage in New York, which lobbies for the equal legal treatment of same-sex unions and other non-traditional unions, rejects the argument that marriage creates prosperity. “Realistically, it is much more likely that having a well-paid job increases one’s chances of getting married than that marrying increases one’s chances of getting a well-paid job,” it argues.

Young adults wait

Stacey Oliker, an associate professor of sociology and urban studies at UW-Milwaukee, says the Census data doesn’t necessarily indicate an erosion of the institution of marriage. “The statistic isn’t evidence that people are choosing against marriage,” she says. “Young people are just marrying much, much later than they were before.”

Nationally, the percentage of married adults between the ages of 25 and 34 dropped from 55 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2009. The number is slightly higher in Wisconsin, 48 percent, but much lower in Milwaukee County, 34 percent.

Fewer women rely on marriage today for economic security, she says, and fewer people of both genders feel that they “have to get married.” Oliker argues that greater freedom to chose against marriage could actually strengthen the institution by preventing some bad marriages – or allowing others to end.

Oliker says about 90 percent of people still marry at some point in their life. “People still marry at an enormous rate,” she says, in the United States compared to other developed countries. Oliker says fewer people are marrying in Milwaukee County because they are more likely to be poor and face greater economic uncertainty.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved grants totaling $118 million a year for five years to groups around the country that promote lasting marriage. Appling says Family Action is working with churches to organize Community Marriage Agreements, coalitions of churches that agree to require marriage counseling and mentoring as well as a waiting period before tying the knot.

She says one agreement forming on the northwest side of Milwaukee has grown to about 40 churches. Another one is forming in Racine. Perhaps the most established such program in the state is Great Marriages for Sheboygan County.

Cohabitators

The Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan demographic research group in Washington D.C., says less formal unions, sometimes called “cohabitation,” are becoming more common.

“Many people who are classified as single are actually in cohabitating relationships with opposite or same-sex partners,” a recent report from the group says. “The sharp decline in marriage has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the number of cohabitating couples.”

The report concludes that marriages have declined since the 1970s because of “rising divorce rates, an increase in women’s educational attainment and labor force participation” and a growing preference among couples to live together before getting married – or as an alternative to marriage.

The Bureau finds that marriage is associated with higher income but suggests this may be because affluent couples are more likely to marry. However, the report adds, “Most researchers agree that marriage also has an independent, positive effect on well-being.”

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