How Many Americans Believe Marriage Is An Essential Part Of Life?

Ask Americans what makes for a fulfilling life and marriage does not crack the top three. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 5,073 US adults, 71 percent called an enjoyable career extremely or very important for a good life, and 61 percent said the same about having close friends. Only 23 percent said it about being married, which placed marriage below having children (26 percent) and even below having a lot of money (24 percent). The findings reflect a real shift over the past decade, and the gap between work and marriage in the public mind keeps widening.

What Tops The List

The five factors Pew tracks tell a consistent story. Career and friendship are seen as core to a good life by clear majorities. Children, money, and marriage cluster well below, all in the low twenties to mid-twenties percent range, separated by only a few points. About a third of respondents call each of children, money, and marriage somewhat important. The remaining 40 to 45 percent for each say marriage and children are not too important or not at all important to a fulfilling life.

The numbers do not say Americans dislike marriage or children. They say the public no longer treats either as a prerequisite for a meaningful life. That position has clear precedent in earlier surveys, but the current spread between work and marriage in the rankings is larger than it has been at any point Pew has measured.

Where Men And Women Differ

Men and women answer almost identically on the importance of close friends and money, but they split on marriage, children, and career. Twenty-eight percent of men called being married extremely or very important, compared with 18 percent of women. Twenty-nine percent of men said the same about having children, compared with 22 percent of women. Career runs the other direction. Seventy-four percent of women called an enjoyable job extremely or very important, against 69 percent of men.

The shift over time is steeper for women than for men. The share of women who say marriage is not important for a fulfilling life climbed from 31 percent in 2019 to 48 percent in 2023, a 17-point jump in four years. The men's number moved much less. Single women now also report less interest in marriage and children than single men, a reversal of the historical pattern.

How Age Changes The Picture

Older adults still place the most weight on marriage. Among adults 65 and older, the share calling marriage extremely or very important runs well above the figure for younger age groups, and the same pattern shows up for an enjoyable career, which 78 percent of those 65 and older flag as essential, compared with 67 to 73 percent of younger adults.

Money runs in the opposite direction. Thirty-five percent of adults aged 18 to 29 call having a lot of money extremely or very important to a fulfilling life, against roughly a quarter or fewer of older respondents. Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults are also significantly more likely than White adults to flag money as essential, with the gap especially large among Asian adults at 49 percent.

Marriage And Divorce By The Numbers

The shift in attitudes shows up in the underlying behavior. Marriage rates have been falling for decades. The CDC put the marriage rate at 6.2 per 1,000 people in 2022, a recovery from the pandemic low of 5.1 in 2020 (the lowest figure on record since 1963), and the median age at first marriage is now 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women. About a quarter of 40-year-olds had never married as of 2021, up from one in five just a decade earlier.

Cohabitation has filled much of the gap. National Survey of Family Growth data analyzed by Pew show that 59 percent of adults aged 18 to 44 have lived with an unmarried partner at some point, compared with 50 percent who have ever been married. Cohabitation is no longer just a step toward marriage. For an increasing share of couples, it is the destination.

The "half of all marriages end in divorce" line that has floated around since the 1980s is also out of date. Divorce rates peaked at 5.3 per 1,000 people in 1981 and have been falling almost continuously since. The CDC put the rate at 2.4 per 1,000 in 2022, the lowest level since the early 1960s. The crude rate (divorces as a share of marriages in a given year) sits closer to 42 percent now than to the older 50 percent figure, and analysts mostly attribute the decline to two structural changes: people marrying later, and fewer people marrying at all.

Why The Numbers Have Shifted

None of this means marriage has lost its appeal across the board. Married Americans still report higher life satisfaction than unmarried Americans on most surveys, and the Gallup data on "thriving" puts married adults aged 25 to 50 well ahead of their never-married peers. What has changed is the public framing. A generation ago, marriage was treated as a default life milestone. Today, a clear majority of US adults treat it as one option among several, important to some, optional to others, and clearly secondary to work, friendship, and increasingly to financial stability for younger and non-White respondents.

Whether that shift continues or reverses is mostly a question about three things: whether economic conditions make marriage and child-rearing easier to afford, whether the gender gap in marriage attitudes keeps widening, and whether cohabitation continues to function as a long-term substitute. The 2023 Pew numbers capture a moment in that ongoing change rather than a settled endpoint.