Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
In this post we will explore the 2013 ACS five-year data on marital status to search for interesting statistics on remarriage in the USA.
We begin with a basic map of marital status: roughly 50 percent of respondents of legal age are married, with some differences between the states.
The highest percentage of married people is found in Utah (56 percent), followed by Idaho (55.9 percent) and Wyoming (54 percent). The lowest share of married adults reside in Indiana, Ohio and Nevada (45 percent). In general, we can see that highly urbanized areas and states with highly populated cities have a lower marriage ratio, while more rural states have a higher percentage of married residents.
According to nationwide statistics, the majority of adults aged 15 or older have married at least once: 63 percent of men and 72 percent of women.
We see that women are more likely to only marry once, but the statistics for men and women are similar for the second and subsequent marriages. Only 16 percent of adults have been married more than once.
Now we can examine how remarriage statistics differ by state. The map below presents the ratio of people who have been married more than once to all adults who have ever been married for each state.
Across the nation, remarried adults make up 24 percent of the population. A higher share of remarried adults are found in the West and South, while the Midwest and Northeast have lower numbers. We also notice that this map does not correlate with the previous map that displayed current marital status. For example, the states of Oklahoma and Arkansas have a high ratio of remarriages (34-35 percent), while the number of married adults in these states is close to the national average. This suggests that although remarriage is rather popular on the national level, it does not always lead to a lower number of active marriages.
About Alexander Fishkov
Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Alexander is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He currently holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Math. He has experience working for industry major companies performing research in the fields of machine learning, data mining and natural language processing. In his free time, Alexander enjoys hiking, Nordic skiing and traveling.
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