Pandemic Shortfall in Marriages and Divorces in the United States

Abstract

Prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, marriage and divorce had been in decline across the United States. As more data are released, evidence mounts that this pattern has persisted, and in some states been magnified, during the pandemic. The authors compared the change in yearly marriage and divorce counts prior to the beginning of the pandemic (change from 2018 to 2019) to estimate an expected number of marriages and divorces for 2020. By computing a P score on the basis of expected and observed marriages and divorces in 2020, the authors determined whether individual states experienced shortfalls or surpluses of marital events. Of the 20 states with available data on marriages, 18 experienced shortfalls (exceptions included Missouri and North Dakota), for an overall sample shortfall of nearly 11 percent. Regarding divorces, 31 of the 35 states with available data also experienced shortfalls (exceptions included Hawaii, Wyoming, Arizona, and Washington), for an overall sample shortfall of 12 percent.

Declining U.S. marriage and divorce rates have been well documented (Reynolds 2020a, 2020b), and there is preliminary evidence these declines have persisted and possibly been exacerbated by the pandemic in at least some states (Manning and Payne 2021). We present yearly estimates of expected numbers of marriages and divorces compared with observed numbers of marriages and divorces on the basis of provisional data on marriage from 20 states and divorce from 35 states (Figure 1). The expected number was based on the percentage changes in the counts of marriages and divorces between 2018 and 2019. On the basis of this percentage change, we then estimated the expected counts for 2020. The estimated P scores (P score = [observed count – expected count]/expected count) represent the rate of shortfalls or excess in both marriages and divorces (observed minus expected) relative to what would have been expected on the basis of the rate of change from 2018 to 2019.

Figure 1.

Pandemic shortfalls in marriages and divorces by available states and total sample of available states.

Marriage

In the 20 states with available yearly counts of marriages all experienced declines between 2018 and 2019, ranging from a 7.70 percent decline in Missouri to a 1.65 percent in Wyoming. We estimated an expected 727,854 marriages in 2020 among our sample, but instead we observed a shortfall of 78,154 marriages, representing an 11 percent decline (P score = −10.7 percent), resulting in 649,700 marriages in 2020. The greatest shortfall was found in Hawaii (P score = −43.7 percent), because of travel limitations, followed by Nevada (P score = −20.3 percent) and Florida (P score = −15.5 percent). Two states had no shortfall: North Dakota (P score = 1.9 percent) and Missouri (P score = 1.8 percent). Not only did they exceed the expected number of marriages, but they exceeded the observed number of marriages in 2019.

Divorce

Unlike marriages, not all states experienced declines in divorce from 2018 to 2019. Of the 35 states examined, 7 experienced increases (Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, South Caroline, Tennessee, and Wyoming), ranging from 18.66 percent in South Carolina to 0.17 percent in Arizona. The resulting percentage change for our total sample was −1.99 percent. Our sample yielded an estimated expected 823,369 divorces for 2020. However, there were only 722,095, representing a 12 percent decline (P score = −12.30 percent).

Pandemic divorce levels varied across states. South Carolina had the greatest shortfall, with nearly one third fewer than expected divorces (P score = −32.9 percent), followed by Georgia (P score = −24.3 percent). Four states—Washington, Arizona, Wyoming, and Hawaii—did not have shortfalls relative to expected divorces. Washington had the highest surplus, with 11 percent more divorces than expected, Arizona recorded 3.4 percent more, Wyoming 2.7 percent, and Hawaii 2.3 percent. Note that shortfalls and surpluses were estimated on the basis of previous percentage changes between 2018 and 2019. Therefore, although Hawaii and Washington were among the states with more divorces than expected, the number observed in 2020 was lower than that observed in 2019; the decline was less than was expected.

Implications

With the largest sample of administrative data to date, our results support expectations of pandemic effects on marriage and divorce in the United States. We provide evidence of shortfalls of 78,154 marriages and 101,274 divorces compared with what would be expected if 2018–2019 patterns had held. Although data from all 50 states are yet to be assessed, if these patterns held across the entire nation, there may have been as many as 215,00 fewer marriages and 90,000 fewer divorces.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231221090192 – Supplemental material for Pandemic Shortfall in Marriages and Divorces in the United States

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231221090192 for Pandemic Shortfall in Marriages and Divorces in the United States by Krista K. Westrick-Payne, Wendy D. Manning and Lisa Carlson in Socius