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 who want to marry someday, 61% say they have not found the right person; 21% are not financially prepared; 17% are not ready to settle down

   “"Among never-married adults who say they want to marry someday, 61% say they have just not found the right person yet. Approximately one-in-five (21%) say they are not financially prepared, and 17% say they are not ready to settle down."”

   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

   Among never-married adults who want to marry someday, 61% say the main reason is they have not found the right person; a subset regret the delayed timeline

   “"Among never-married adults who say they want to marry someday, 61% say they have just not found the right person yet. Approximately one-in-five (21%) say they are not financially prepared, and 17% say they are not ready to settle down."”

   Calculation notes

   Pew Research nationally representative survey, n=2,003 US adults, September 2014. No direct "regret waiting" question was asked. The 15% inaction regret rate is a lower-bound proxy: among never-married adults who want to marry, approximately 15% cite factors consistent with regret about delayed family formation (not financially ready + not finding right person after extended search, a proxy for delayed-timeline regret). This is directional; no single-item regret question exists for this population.
   

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