SEATTLE — It looks like folks who’ve never been married will soon be the majority in Seattle.
Census data for 2022 released this month shows an estimated 313,800 city residents aged 15 and older had never been hitched. That’s a record high, and a jump of nearly 22,000 from the 2021 estimate.
As a share of the city’s 15-and-older population, never-married people are now 47 percent of the total. That percentage has been slowly creeping up. In 2010, it was about 44 percent, when an estimated 234,200 were never married.
Just for fun, I looked up the number from the 1960 census. Only 21 percent of Seattle’s 15-and-older population was never married back then.
The new data comes from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The marital status data is tabulated for the population age 15 and older, which may seem far too young as a baseline age for marriage. I agree, but there is a reason for it.
The minimum age varies from state to state, with most allowing marriage at 16 with parental consent. There are also four states where the threshold for marriage is 15 or younger, and strangely, Washington and California have no minimum age for marriage. Of course, the share of the population married at such a young age is tiny.
In our state, people who are 17 can get married with parental consent and those younger than 17 can get married if a judge signs off. A Pew study found that as of 2014, 4.3 per 1,000 Washingtonians between the ages of 15 and 17 were married, slightly lower than the national figure of 4.6.
It’s not just in Seattle, or in big cities, where never-marrieds are increasing. Nationally, about 34 percent of those 15 and older were never married last year, up about 2 percentage points from 2010.
Ironically, more people than ever can get married, thanks to the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even before that, a number of states had extended marriage rights to same-sex couples, including Washington in 2012.
Still, marriage rates are going down, and it seems like marriage has lost much of its appeal to many Americans, particularly younger adults.
A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found 55 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds felt it was just as well if long-term couples did not get married, while only 45 percent felt it was better if they did tie the knot.
What’s behind trend?
There is no shortage of theories on the reasons behind the rising disillusionment, and even cynicism, concerning the institution of marriage.
Young people are no longer expected to get married as a rite of passage into adulthood the way they used to be. There is certainly far less stigma around remaining single or choosing to be in an unmarried partnership these days.
Part of it could be due to a general decline in religiosity and traditional values. Couples often get married before having children, but a greater share of young adults are deciding against parenthood, making marriage less important.
Young women with good careers and incomes may simply feel they don’t need to be married, like women in previous generations did.
And some point to the fear of divorce, which can lead to ugly and financially ruinous legal battles.
If the current trend continues, never-marrieds will soon make up the majority in Seattle. But we wouldn’t be the first big city to hit that milestone.
Among the 50 most-populous U.S. cities in 2022, there were seven in which never-marrieds made up more than half of the 15-and-older population. Detroit had the highest share, at 58.5 percent. The others were Washington, D.C., Boston, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Baltimore and Minneapolis. Seattle ranked 12th among the 50 cities.
It’s an interesting and rather dissimilar assortment of cities at the top of the list. It’s not surprising to see some with lower median household incomes, because research has shown that marriage is increasingly something reserved for the more affluent. Marriage rates have declined sharply for lower- and middle-class people, while they’ve remain steady for those with higher incomes and college degrees.
But there are also some high-income cities at the top of the list, showing there is more to this trend than just wealth and education.
Boston and Minneapolis have a younger-than-average median age for big cities, which would contribute to them having a larger share of never-married residents.
