The Institute for Family Studies recently published a study titled “Mapping Marriage in America: Where Young Adults Marry Most.” Along with presenting their findings, they also created an actual map for young adults of both sexes and three different age groups to see where they’re most likely to find a spouse.
Dr. Wendy R. Wang is director for research and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. She told the “Washington Watch” program that where the most singles are is not where marriage is happening.
“This is interesting because a lot of young people these days, when they're looking for a spouse, they're thinking they want to go to the big cities like New York City and LA. But in fact, these areas are not where marriages happen,” Wang said. “So, where do you find most marriages today? No. 1 is Provo, Utah, and then a lot of places in the middle America.”
The three areas with the highest marriage rate were in regions of Utah, Tennessee, and Indiana. However, this is for adults between the ages of 22 and 29.
For singles in their 30s, she said that one finds that some cities — such as San Jose, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago — have more married adults than those in the younger age group. There are other factors that affect this higher age group.
“This relates to the share of employed men versus single women. So, where you have more full-time employed men, then you will find more marriages,” Wang stated. “Like I said earlier on, the biggest factor we found is the pool of single men with a full-time job. That is the strongest factor that related to marriage rate.”
This ratio of higher-earning men to single women had an especially strong, positive correlation to women in their 30s.
Wang noted that they also looked at factors such as education and income. And according to the study, men in their 30s had a higher marriage rate in regions where a higher share of single men had a bachelor’s degree or earned at least $60,000.
Of course, there was also a spiritual aspect in the marriage rate as religious adults in their 20s and 30s were more likely to marry than their nominal and secular counterparts. Wang said this matched with data at the geographic level.
“If you look where the share of the married young adults are highest, the top area is Utah County, Utah, where we know there are a lot of Mormons. And then also another area that's in Lakewood, New Jersey. So that's where you find the largest Orthodox Jews there,” Wang said. “So that's kind of like an outlier.”
While young adults of today value jobs and employment, Wang said the study revealed good jobs are not as important to happiness as being married.
“So, we encourage young adults to — if you can find, if you can relocate to a place to find a job, you can relocate to a place to find a spouse, because being married is the most important factor of happy,” Wang said.
