UK Study Projects Only Half of Current 20-Year-Olds Will Marry

A new report from the Marriage Foundation (UK) utilizing the latest data from the (UK) Office for National Statistics reveals a generational shift away from the institution of marriage.

The report projects that half of today's 20-year-olds will never marry (47 percent of women and 48 percent of men). Couples will increasingly choose to cohabit.

This represents a striking difference from the UK baby boomer generation (born between the end of WWII and the early 1960s) where 87 percent of men and 92 percent of women married.

In 1970, the peak year for marriages among 25-year-olds in the UK, 564,818 men and women got married. In 2010, only 56,598 married, a decline of 90 percent. Today, only 5 percent of men and 10 percent of women are married at age 25.

When current trends are applied to today's 20-year-olds, figures show that only 52 percent of men and 53 percent of women are expected ever to marry.

Researchers blamed a number of factors, including early cohabitation, which makes people less likely ever to tie the knot, celebrity divorces, and decades of undermining of the institution of marriage by the state.

Source: Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2652465/Why-half-todays-20-year-olds-never-married-How-young-couples-likely-cohabit-tie-knot.html