Recent Marriages to Same-sex and Different-sex Couples: Mobility, Region, Home Ownership, and Household Income

Although approximately half of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce (Amato, 2010; Cherlin, 2010), the remarriage rate has declined steadily in recent decades (Brown & Lin, 2013; Schweizer, 2019). In this profile, we examine the trend in the remarriage rate since 1990 (see Note) and investigate geographic variation in the remarriage rate by gender using recent American Community Survey (ACS) data. This profile is an update of a previous profile on the Geographic Variation in the Remarriage Rate (FP-15-08).

Remarriage after Divorce

Among adults who had ended their first marriage in divorce, about three-fourths of the elderly men and two-thirds of the elderly women in both 1970 and 1980 were found to be remarried. However, the general decline in remarriage at the younger ages during the 1970s was accentuated among those under 35 years old. Although the proportion remarried among women with graduate school training was the smallest, that proportion declined less during the 1970s than for women in any other educational level. In both 1970 and 1980, the proportion remarried was positively correlated with personal income for men but negatively for women. An estimated two-thirds of those who end their first marriage in divorce will eventually remarry while they have young children living with them. During the lifetime of women in their second marriage after their first marriage ended in divorce, only one-third of their children are born after remarriage, whereas two-thirds are born before their second marriages. During the 1970s, the proportion of currently divorced adults living alone or sharing the homes of relatives diminished, while the proportion living as cohabitants outside marriage rose substantially. It appears as if both the divorce rate and the remarriage rate are approaching a period of relative stability.