Trending In America: Record-high Share Of 40-Year-Olds Never Married

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

In 1980, just 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married compared to 25 percent of 40-year-olds in 2021, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

Today the trend is more pronounced especially among African Americans, 46 percent reach age 40 without marrying. And more of them are male; 28 percent of 40-year-old Black men have never married, versus 22 percent of Black women the same age.

Bridgette Reed, a marriage and family therapist in Dallas, recently offered an explanation for the trend in Time magazine, “Most Black men feel they need a certain level of financial stability to be married,” she said. “When they feel the weight of financial pressure, getting married is last on their list.”

Aiming to explain the trend, Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, said, “We’ve never been in this family territory before, territory where so many young adults have never tied the knot. The reason this matters is that men and women are much more likely to be flourishing financially, socially, and emotionally when they are married rather than single.”

While many unmarried 40-year-olds are living with a romantic partner, most are not. In 2022, 22 percent of never-married adults ages 40 to 44 were cohabitating.

Forty-year-olds without a four-year college degree were more likely to have never married than those who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. One-third of those with a high school diploma or less had never married, compared with 26 percent of those with some college education and 18 percent of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education.

“To be sure, we can’t assume that if someone has not married by age 40, they never will,” Pew researchers noted in the report. “In fact, about one-in-four 40-year-olds who had not married in 2001 had done so by age 60. If that pattern holds, a similar share of today’s never-married 40-year-olds will marry in the coming decades.”

Is the U.S. progressing toward a system in which marriage is rarer, and more stable, than it was in the past?

“We have a growing number of older adults who are both childless and never married,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew, who wrote the analysis. “Now we’re starting to get into older ages. And you start to think about support issues: who’s going to take care of them as they proceed into their relatively older age?”

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Experts say there are several reasons why 40-year-olds never marry or delay marriage. Many choose to focus on personal growth, adventure, or pursuing passions before settling down. Some prioritize professional success and advancement. Societal changes, economic shifts, and cultural influences have also led to a decline in the traditional view of marriage.

It’s also worth noting that the trend of never marrying by 40 is not exclusive to this age group; many people in their 30s and even 20s are also choosing to remain single.