The U.S. marriage rate sat at 6.1 per 1,000 people in 2023, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics — less than half of the nation’s 1946 peak of 16.4 per 1,000. But a fresh state-by-state breakdown shows the decline is far from uniform, with a small cluster of states holding marriage rates well above the national trend for years running.
Key Points
- The national marriage rate has fallen by more than half since 1946, and remained at 6.2 per 1,000 as of 2022, according to CDC data reported by NBC News.
- Utah posted the nation’s highest refined marriage rate — 51.7 per 1,000 unmarried women — in 2024, its fifth consecutive year at the top, per Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR).
- Idaho (44.3), Colorado (43.0), Wyoming (42.9) and South Dakota (41.4) rounded out the 2024 top five, all far above the 2024 national refined rate of 31.2.
- Delaware posted the nation’s lowest rate for a second straight year (20.1), followed by Louisiana (21.2), New Mexico (21.6), Connecticut (23.8) and Rhode Island (24.3).
- Colorado has placed in the top five for at least two years running, and Utah has now led the country for half a decade, per NCFMR’s tracking.
A Regional Divide That Keeps Repeating
NCFMR’s analysis, which uses Census Bureau American Community Survey data to calculate a “refined” marriage rate — marriages per 1,000 unmarried women age 15 and older, a more precise measure than the CDC’s population-wide rate — found that Western and Midwestern states dominate the upper end of the ranking almost every year, while the Northeast consistently clusters at the bottom. In the 2023 data, the prior year’s release, Utah (49.0), Alaska (43.5), Colorado (41.0), Kansas (40.3) and North Dakota (38.8) held the top five spots. Comparing the two years shows Utah and Colorado as the only states to hold a top-five position in both, suggesting a more durable regional pattern rather than a one-year statistical blip.
Why the National Number Still Looks Grim
None of the high-marrying states are large enough in population to meaningfully pull up the national average on their own, which is why the overall U.S. rate keeps registering near historic lows even as these states post numbers double or triple the national figure. The CDC’s own historical data shows marriages dropped to 1.7 million in 2020 — the fewest since 1963 — before climbing back toward roughly 2.1 million by 2022, a partial pandemic rebound that still left the long-term downward trend intact. The state-level pattern doesn’t reverse that national trajectory, but it complicates the popular narrative that marriage is disappearing everywhere at the same pace. In parts of the Mountain West and Midwest, marriage rates have stayed elevated and comparatively stable for at least half a decade, even as the country as a whole keeps trending toward record lows.
