Big cities are single; the heartland is marrying. A new Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report published last week finds that the largest shares of unmarried young adults in their 20s and 30s cluster in urban centers such as Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Yet, according to the same analysis, “the areas with the most new marriages are almost entirely in middle America.”
Where singles cluster
IFS reports that urban hubs including Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have the biggest concentrations of unmarried young adults.
Where marriages happen
By contrast, the researchers identified marriage hotspots across the heartland, including Provo, Utah; Fort Wayne and Evansville, Indiana; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and regions of west/central Tennessee, northwest Georgia, and North Carolina’s Greenville/Jacksonville corridor.
What tracks with higher marriage rates
The IFS analysis found that places with higher ratios of young men in stable full-time employment to single women tend to have higher marriage rates. IFS also noted that North Dakota and the San Jose, California, area had the highest such ratios, with “marriage rates in the upper 20%.”
Wendy Wang, IFS senior fellow and director of research—who coauthored the report with IFS research fellow Ken Burchfiel and IFS senior fellow and University of Virginia professor Brad Wilcox—said a full-time job “is the strongest factor that is related to the marriage rate.” She added, “Where the most singles are actually is not where the marriages are happening,” in comments on “Washington Watch” Monday.
Religion’s role
IFS’s geographic patterns align with prior research linking religious practice to marriage. Wang pointed to Utah County, Utah—“where we know there’s a lot of Mormons”—as having the highest share of married young adults, and to Lakewood, New Jersey, which she described as having a large concentration of Orthodox Jews. “In general, from our study, we find that people who are religious are more likely to be married and more likely to have children,” Wang said.
