Marital Status Report

How much do you know about marriage and divorce? Over the years, it has been said that marriage and divorce rates have been dropping (see this article for more information). We decided to investigate and see for ourselves whether this is true! We found data from the United States Census Bureau that provided data for several attributes related to marital status from 2009-2015. We break apart this data in the next few graphs. We'll first describe the various marital categories we examined, and then we'll talk about how they relate to yearly trends, age, race, region, and geographical mobility. Here we go!

Marital Status Categories
Never Married Icon
Never Married: Includes all people who have never been married. Also includes people whose only marriage(s) was annulled.
Married Icon
Married: Includes people who are currently married, even if they were previously divorced or widowed. Separated couples do not count. If appropriate, this may also include couples who live together or are in common-law marriages.
Divorced Icon
Divorced: Includes people who are legally divorced and who have not remarried. Those without a final divorce decree are classified as “separated.”
Separated Icon
Separated: Includes people legally separated or otherwise absent from their spouse because of marital discord. Those without a final divorce decree are classified as “separated.” This category also includes people who have been deserted or who have parted because they no longer want to live together, but who have not obtained a divorce.
Widowed Icon
Widowed: Includes people who have not remarried after their spouses passed away.

Now that you know how each category is defined, let's go compare it to other stuff!

Jean Hooi Lee - MS Computer Science

Ming Yang - MPS Information Science

Hao Rong - MS Regional Science
Marital Status by Year

In the past six years, we can see that there has been little change in any of the five categories. If we want to be nitpicky, there is a slight upward trend visible in the number of unmarried people (about a 2% change from 2009-2015 out of a population of about 255,421,235 people in the United States). This is actually consistent with the article about how the marriage rate is decreasing, so we confirmed something!

Now, let's find out at what age people get married! We will use the most recent 2015 data to do this.

Marital Status by Age

Looking at the "Never Married" category for both men and women, we can see that the trends are nearly identical from ages 15-44 - most are single in their teenage years, about 30% have been married at some point from ages 20-34, and the majority of people have gotten married by ages 35-44. The divergence appears starting around ages 45-54, where women begin to show a higher percentage of being widowed. By the time both genders are 65+, if you take a look at the red dot, 70.4% of men are married, while only 42.6% of women are. 37.3% of women are widowed compared to 12.2% of men. It appears that men are dying earlier than women!

How about ethnicity/race? How does that play a role in marriage and divorce? Let's go see!

Marital Status by Ethnicity

We don't mean to sound racist here, so please don't be offended by whatever we say!

It seems that if you're Asian, among your Asian peers, you had a higher likelihood of being married in 2015 than anything else. This trend was very similar for Caucasians as well. On the other hand, if you are African American, you were most likely to be unmarried amongst your African American peers. If you are Hispanic, we would all have to guess your marital status, since you had a relatively equal likelihood of being married or unmarried! As for divorce, not only were Asians the most likely to be married, but they have the lowest rate of divorce! Yay for marital bliss!

Now, let's talk about where the married people are. On to the maps!

The midwest appears to have a relatively higher married rate compared to all other regions (northeast, south, and west). The coastal areas and region near Great Lakes have relatively higher unmarried rates. This might be because there is a higher population density in these areas. The separated, divorced, and widowed rates are higher in the southeast. The divorce rate is also higher in the west compared to other parts of the country.

Washington D.C. is an extreme outlier on the map with both the highest unmarried rate and the lowest married rate, but it can hardly be recognized in the map.
Geographical Mobility
home
People who remain in the same house from 1 year ago
directions_bike
People who moved within the county in the past year
directions_car
People who moved to a different county within the same state in the past year
train
People who moved to a different state in the past year
local_airport
People who moved from abroad in the past year

So we just looked at maps of where people are for each marital status category. Now, how many people are actually moving?

In general, 75-90% of people tend to stay in the same house from year to year. However, those who have never married or who are separated had a tendency to be more mobile from 2014 to 2015. Of those who moved, most stayed near their original homes, moving only within the county. Less than 1% of people in each category have moved from abroad. In the graph on the left, we have greatly enlarged the 0-10% section to make the values of the last three categories easier to compare.

And that's all the data we have for you! So...

In Conclusion...
Looking at all the attributes as a whole, we can see that marital status is a complex subject that cannot be defined by any one characteristic. We have examined the categories of "Never Married," "Married," "Divorced," "Separated," and "Widowed" in the context of annual trends, age, gender, ethnicity, region, and geographical mobility. We hope that you have found this report interesting. Thanks for reading!