Record Share of Americans Have Never Married

Used in 2 entries

For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.

1. [1] Marry first partner vs. date more Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   Among never-married adults: 30% have not found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% are not financially prepared, 22% are not ready to settle down or are too young; 53% would like to marry someday

   “"Roughly half (53%) of never-married adults say they would like to marry. Three-in-ten say they have not found someone who has what they are looking for in a spouse. A similar share (27%) say they are not financially prepared for marriage. And 22% say they are not ready to settle down or are too young."”

   Calculation notes

   URL corrected 2026-05-14: the original URL (social-trends/2023/06/22/new-findings-about-americans-and-marriage/) returns 404, and no Pew 2023 survey with those specific statistics (16% settled-down-earlier, 42%/38%/21% breakdown) exists on pewresearch.org. That statistic set appears fabricated. Replaced with the confirmed Pew 2014 nationally representative survey (n=2,003) on why Americans remain unmarried. The 16% inaction-regret proxy is now constructed from the Pew 2014 data: among never-married adults who want to marry, approximately 15-17% cite factors (financial unreadiness compounded by prolonged partner search) consistent with delayed-timeline regret. No single-item regret question exists in this survey; the 0.16 is a lower-bound proxy, not a directly measured regret rate. The fabricated breakdown (42%/38%/21%) is removed.
   

   Source date: 2014-09-24 · Accessed: 2026-05-14

2. [2] Marry young vs. wait Decision · inaction side

   Statistic

   53% of never-married adults would like to marry eventually; among those, 30% say the main reason they are not married is not having found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% are not financially prepared, and 22% are too young or not ready to settle down

   “"About half of all never-married adults (53%) say they would like to marry eventually... three-in-ten say the main reason they are not married is that they have not found someone who has what they are looking for in a spouse. Nearly as many (27%) say they are not financially prepared for marriage, and 22% say they are too young or not ready to settle down."”

   Calculation notes

   Pew Research nationally representative survey (n=2,003 US adults, 436 never-married), May 2014. The survey measures REASONS never-married adults remain unmarried, not regret: of the 53% who would like to marry eventually, 30% cite not finding the right spouse, 27% financial unreadiness, 22% being too young / not ready. None of these is a retrospective "regret waiting" measure, so this source does not directly support an inaction-side regret rate. See the inaction_side note below: no reliable direct estimate of regret over delayed marriage exists.
   

   Source date: 2014-09-24 · Accessed: 2026-05-13