New Yorkers Marry Late, Report Says
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When it comes to marriage, New Yorkers like to play the field.
A new U.S. Census Bureau report shows that fewer Empire State residents are getting married and they are doing so later in life than most Americans.
Because the state rates high in education, the findings should not come as a surprise, a professor of sociology at New York University, Judith Stacey, said.
“The higher the education level, the later the marriage age,” she said.
Ms. Stacey, who specializes in gender, family, and sexuality, said that going to college and spending a longer time in higher education acted to delay marriage for many people, particularly women. The data is part of a state-by state study to be released today by the bureau’s American Community Survey. The report, compiled from statistics collected from 3 million households between 2000 and 2003, analyzes links among marriage, fertility, and other socioeconomic factors, including race, ethnicity, and poverty status.
New York had the lowest percentage of married households, and its residents first tied the knot at higher median ages than all but two states, the report found. While slightly more than half of all Americans lived in married households, only 45.6% of New Yorkers did. While the national median age for a first marriage was 26.7 for men and 25.1 for women, New York men and women waited an average of another two years.
The study also found that New York had the nation’s fifth-lowest percentage of teenage women who gave birth in the last year, 5%.The national average was 7.7%; the state with the highest percentage, Arkansas, stood at 13.34%.
New York’s ranking prompted contrasting interpretations from socially conservative and liberal groups.
“Teens are probably having more abortions” in New York, the state director of the conservative American Family Association, Frank Russo, said. Mr. Russo said that because access to abortion is easier in New York than in other states, a higher abortion rate would contribute to fewer teens’ giving birth.
The state director for a liberal civil liberties group, People for the American Way, dismissed that notion. “As usual, they’re willing to make statements that are not based on facts,” Deni Frand said. “I think it’s having to do with women having greater opportunities and independence.”
Ms. Stacey said access to abortion could affect the rate of teens’ giving birth but said the finding was more likely the result of a broader range of factors. The Census Bureau data showed that Southern states had the highest percentages of teen mothers, which Ms. Stacey said would be expected. “The most religious states have the highest teen pregnancy rates,” she said.
New York more closely followed national trends in other factors the report considered. The state’s percentage of women who were below the poverty level who gave birth equaled the national average, 23.2%, as did New York’s percentage of unwed mothers, about 29%.
The American Community Survey’s conclusions analyzed geographic patterns but did not consider trends over time. On a regional level, the study found fewer married households across the Northeast, and more in the South. Like New York, the states that had fewer marriages were those in which people married later in life. Men and women in the South, Midwest, and West got married younger than in the Northeast, where New York followed only Massachusetts and tied Connecticut in oldest median age for a first marriage.