Still Unmarried in Massachusetts

As of 2015, the median age at first marriage for Massachusetts men was 31, tied with New York for the highest in the nation.

Shane Dunn of Boston was 31 when he tied the knot last July. Dunn and his fiancee delayed their wedding plans for five years, as he established a career in education management in Boston and paid off student debt, and she finished business school in Chicago.

“When we met, in our mid-20s, neither one of us had wanted to rush into marriage,” Dunn said. “Marriage was always in my plans, but it took a long time for us to get set up with our careers. Coordinating our careers is very important to both of us. It’s a big topic.”

In Massachusetts, 74 percent of young people had never been married as of last year, the highest of any state. It was 57 percent in 2000.

Women in New England, and in Massachusetts especially, have low rates of marriage and tend to marry later, said Susan Strate, a demographer at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute. They also have higher levels of educational attainment and are more likely to be enrolled in higher education or working. Strate said it is not clear that the region’s high education and workforce participation rates are the cause of its low marriage rates, though it is likely that there is some connection.

But young singles are increasingly common even in places such as Utah and Idaho, where the influence of the Mormon church encourages early marriage. In Utah, 48 percent of young people are still single, up from 37 percent in 2000. In Idaho, the percentage of young singles has increased from 35 to 53 percent.

One reason is that more people who aren’t Mormons are moving to Utah, said Pam Perlich, a demographer at the University of Utah. But Mormons also feel pressure to get a better education and establish a career before marriage.

“In order to get that house and white picket fence, people now have to invest in more education, and to do that, they have to delay marriage. That’s as true for Mormons as anybody else,” said Marie Cornwall, an emeritus sociology professor at Brigham Young University.

For many millennials who graduated into the recession, a desire to build a solid educational and financial foundation trumped marriage plans.

LaTisha Styles, a financial adviser who grew up in Atlanta, said she wanted to get married years ago, but after she graduated from college, in 2006, she went to graduate school to study finance, she then moved back into her parents’ home as she looked for a job.

“I wanted to get married in my early 20s but I had to put it on the back burner and work on my career,” Styles said. Last year, at 33, she married and moved to Memphis where her husband found work in human resources.

“I really wanted to be in a two-income family,” Styles said. “In the past, marriage was about finding somebody to take care of you. I think millennials have started a new tradition that you need to have your own career. Marriage is more like a strategic alliance.”

Getting Used to the Single Life?

For 70 years, the typical marriage age in the U.S. has been steadily creeping toward 30. In 2016, the median age at first marriage was 29 for American men and 27 for women, according to national census data. For both genders, that is two years older than in 2000, and more than seven years older compared to the 1950s.

In 14 states, the median marriage age for men is more than 30. Rhode Island is the only state where the median age for women has reached 30.

Steven Martin, a demographer who studied the trend toward later marriage for the Urban Institute, predicted in 2014 that millennials would be less likely to marry by age 40 than any other generation. The same year, the Pew Research Center projected that a record 25 percent of young people may never get married. (The Pew Charitable Trusts funds both the Pew Research Center and Stateline.)

Two years later, Martin is even more confident in his prediction, as marriage rates have continued to fall despite the ongoing economic recovery.

“As you put it off more, there are fewer years for this marriage search to occur,” Martin said. Delaying marriage “decreases the chance you will find a suitable partner, and also increases the chance you will get used to this single life and maybe decide to stay that way,” he added.

With greater educational and professional opportunities open to them, today’s women tend to see marriage as more easily postponed than earlier generations.

“They don’t want to get married until they have finished their education and gotten their careers going,” said University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen. “This is partly because they think they’re going to land a better man that way, and be his equal, which is very important to many of them.”

“In the 1960s, there was this sense that if you were a woman and you didn’t marry right away all the good guys would be gone,” Martin said. “Now the time window for entry into marriage is clearly stretched out. It’s feasible and possible to marry at a more measured pace.”

Some unmarried millennials point to technology as a factor.

Chelsea Briche, 27, a Los Angeles blogger, said online dating and “hook-up” apps have made marriage less enticing.

“They create this mindset that there’s always something better at the swipe of a finger,” Briche said. “It creates an entire new world that I’m not sure any other generation has experienced.”