A new marriage index, produced by a group of non-partisan US social scientists has showed that the health of American marriage has slid alarmingly since 1970.
The Marriage Index, produced by the Institute for American Values, demonstrates that, across of a range of five indicators, the state of marriage in the US has declined dramatically.
The Index shows that only 57.2 per cent of American adults aged between 20-54 are married, down from 78.6 per cent in 1970.
It also shows that the percentage of births inside marriage has plunged, from 89.3 per cent in 1970 to just 60.3 per cent in 2008.
Just 61.2 per cent of first marriages were intact in 2008, compared to 77.4 per cent in 1970.
The declines in other areas were less steep. For example, the percentage of people who said that they were “very happy” with their marriage declined from 67 per cent in 1970 to 62 per cent in 2008.
Also, the percentage of children living with their own married parents has declined from 68.7 per cent in 1970 to 61 per cent in 2008. Overall, the index found that the health of marriage had declined from a cumulative score of 76.2, based on the five indicators, in 1970 to 60.3 per cent.
For African-Americans, however, the plunge was even steeper. While the cumulative score for marital health, as measured by the same five yardsticks, was 64.0 in 1970 for African-Americans, this had slipped to a worrying 39.6 per cent by 2008.
The percentage of married adult African-Americans has slumped from 70.3 per cent in 1970 to 39.6 in 2008, while the percentage of births to married parents has collapsed in the African-American community, from 69.7 per cent in 1970 to 28.4 per cent in 2008.
In its report, the Institute said that such an index of the health of marriage because a large body of research suggested that “the status of our marriages influences our well-being at least as much as the status of our finances”.
Pointing out that economists had established a range of indicators economic health which were widely accepted as accurate and as important, the report said that there was no equivalent focus on the health of marriage.
The absence of a “clear, compelling, and commonly-agreed upon set of leading marriage indicators” prevented society from focusing clearly on the health of marriage, the report said. Because of this, policy makers and opinion leaders seemed not to care about marriage trends, or even notice them.
