Utah marriage stats: State stands out in more ways than one

David DeMille, St. George Spectrum & Daily News
·3 min read

The phrase "'til death do us part" has been getting rarer and rarer in the U.S. over the past decade, with the national marriage rate falling by 8% since 2011.

But while fewer people are getting married, Utah stands out as the state that is sticking with it the longest. The Beehive State ranks as the state with both the highest percentage of married couples and the lowest percentage of divorces, according to a new analysis of state and federal statistics.

In the 10-year period between 2011 and 2021, Utah was the only state to count both an increase in new marriages, up 7%, and an increase in divorces, which rose by 5%, according to comparisons published by QuoteWizard, an online insurance comparison platform operated by Lending Tree.

Nationally, the number of people getting married declined by 8% during that span, while divorces also declined, dropping by 17%, according to the analysis.

"The number of people getting married and divorced is changing particularly quickly in certain states," according to QuoteWizard. "The marriage rate has dropped by 20% in three states over the last decade. The divorce rate, however, has seen an even bigger decline. For instance, divorces have dropped by 32% in Massachusetts since 2011."

Marriage rebound?

For most of the 21st Century, Utah has followed the nationwide trend of fewer people getting married.

But in 2021, with marriages nationwide on the rebound after many were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of marriages actually increased.

Utah's marriage rate jumped from 8.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 9.1 in 2021, according to the National Vital Statistics System.

Wedding Report, a market research company based in Arizona, reported earlier this month that marriages jumped nationwide, although the expectation for 2023 was that things "should be closer to normal," said Shane McMurray, the CEO of Wedding Report.

With a likely dropoff coming because of things like inflation, a cooling economy and "wedding burnout" from a busy 2022 season, the 2023 figures should fall back into what had been a decades-long trend, McMurray said.

COVID-19 marriage dropoff

There should be plenty of room to tick upward. The 2020 national marriage rate was just 5.1 per 1,000 people, the lowest level in 121 years. By raw numbers, that meant about 300,000 fewer marriages in 2020 than would otherwise be expected.

In 2021, with the numbers jumping back up to 6 per 1,000 people, there were about 2 million couples married.

Falling marriage rates

The number of people getting married remains on a long-term decline, though.

According to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, about one in three adults have never married, and the annual rate of marriages has fallen from 9.8 marriages per 1,000 people in the 1990s to about six per 1,000 as of 2021.

In Utah, that number has always been higher than the national averages, but it has fallen as well, going from 11.2 marriages per 1,000 people in 1990 to just eight by 2019, according to the Utah Office of Vital Records.

The number of Americans getting married jumped in 2021, largely due to a bounceback from 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the long-term trend has been for fewer Americans to marry, with overall marriage rates still down over the past 30 years.
The number of Americans getting married jumped in 2021, largely due to a bounceback from 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the long-term trend has been for fewer Americans to marry, with overall marriage rates still down over the past 30 years.

In addition, the tie between marriage and income has become more pronounced. The more money someone earns, the more likely they are to be married, with men who earn more than $100,000 per year getting married 78% of the time, making them by far the most likely demographic group to be married, according to the QuoteWizard report. That number drops below 50% for men making less than $40,000 per year.

For women, the figures are slightly different, with women more likely to be married at lower income levels. Still, 66% of women making more than $100,000 were married, compared to 46% of women making less than $40,000.

"The reasons why marriage and divorce rates are changing are complex," according to the authors of the QuoteWizard report. "In general, people are getting married later in life. There is also less of a societal emphasis on marriage and a greater financial cost when getting divorced."

This article originally appeared on St. George Spectrum & Daily News: Utah marriage numbers jumped in 2021, bucking long-term trends