Fewer couples in the US are getting married due to the economic
slowdown that has prompted more couples to live together without tying
the knot, according to new census data.
The new figures show that the rate of cohabitation has risen in many
places but is highest in areas that offer many people grim prospects for
a better financial future: old industrial cities and the Mississippi
Delta.
Unmarried couples made up 12 per cent of U.S. couples in 2010, a 25
per cent increase in 10 years, according to data released last week.
Two-thirds of the cities with the largest shares of unmarried couples
were in the Northeast and Midwest, up from about half a decade earlier.
"Couples, whose employment opportunities are more precarious, tend
not to marry," says Stephanie Coontz, sociologist with the Council on
Contemporary Families. Many “are hedging their bets — waiting to see if
they can improve their long-term odds by making sure they're
economically and emotionally secure with each other.”
In other parts of the US, such as northern California, south Florida
and New England, changing mores about the nature of family are believed
to have increased the rate of cohabitation.
"These are places with flexibility about what constitutes a family so
that even those with more prosperity may elect to have non-married
families and lives," says Virginia Rutter, sociology professor at
Framingham State University in Massachusetts.
Couples at both ends of
the economic spectrum are opting to live together rather than marry,
largely because women increasingly rely less on men to take care of them
financially.
Women who earn good incomes have more choices, "about how they arrange their private lives,'' Professor Rutter says.
“You will find more unmarried couples in larger cities, both because
of heavier concentrations of poverty, and because cities attract young,
educated people, who are not yet prepared to marry."
Prosperous suburban areas and middle class districts have higher
rates of married couples, according to the census figures.
About 23 per
cent of couples in the mostly working class California city of Oakland
are cohabiting but only 12 per cent of couples in Burbank are unmarried,
a more prosperous Los Angeles suburb.
In Baltimore, 27 per cent of
couples are cohabiting compared with 9 per cent in nearby Columbia,
Maryland.
Unmarried couples include a householder — the person filling out the census form — and someone who checks "unmarried partner.”
Most are opposite-sex couples, but the Census Bureau classifies even legally married gay couples as unmarried partners.