CDC reports marriages in 2022 matched pre-pandemic levels

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reported that more than 2 million marriages occurred in the United States in 2022. The CDC said the last time the country had more than 2 million marriages in a single year was 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many social gathering locations.

Is this because the pandemic delayed these marriages, or because it’s just how the numbers shook out? According to CDC statistics, the number of marriages in the United States between 2000 and 2019 consistently exceeds 2 million. During 2020 and 2021—major years for the pandemic—the number dropped to roughly 1.6 million and 1.9 million, respectively.

What does this look like state-by-state? The CDC reported that the numbers of marriages in New York, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii all increased by more than 10 percent—more than 20 percent in the case of New York—between 2021 and 2022. Nevada—home of Las Vegas—maintained its status as the state with the highest marriage rates in the United States, but the number of marriages there actually decreased slightly between 2021 and 2022. Nevada has had a steadily decreasing marriage rate since 1990.

Are marriage rates increasing or decreasing overall? According to a study addressing that exact question by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, marriage rates declined between 1982 and 2009 before stabilizing at around 6-7 marriages per every thousand people between then and 2017 and then dropping further in 2018. The statistics from the CDC also show a steady decline in marriage rates since the start of the 21st century. The CDC acknowledged in the NCHS study that “Marriage has been shown to be correlated with positive health outcomes and longevity.”

Dig deeper: Read Daniel Darling’s column in WORLD Opinions about how the United States has been experiencing a declining marriage rate overall, according to some observers, and its effects.