According to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau, there has been a notable decline in the percentage of women with a recent birth who were unmarried.
In 2023, some four million women in the United States aged 15 to 50 gave birth in the last year. Less than 31 percent (1.2 million) of these women were unmarried, a decline from 2011 when 35.7 percent of women with a recent birth were unmarried. Among the 1.2 million unmarried women with a recent birth in 2023, 35.5 percent (450,000) lived with an unmarried partner.
By age, 90.1 percent of women ages 15 to 19 with a birth in the last year were unmarried in 2023. However, the number of unmarried women in this age group with a recent birth in 2011 (216,436) decreased by more than half by 2023 (82,530).
By educational attainment, 48.9 percent of women with less than a high school education and 47.9 percent of women with a high school diploma or GED were unmarried at the time of their recent birth in 2023. In 2011, the same figures were 57.0 percent and 49.0 percent. Among women with a recent birth who held a bachelor’s degree, the share who were unmarried increased over the past decade, rising from 8.8 percent in 2011 to 11.4 percent in 2023.
During this time period, the share of women with a recent birth who were unmarried either decreased or remained stable in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia. Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia had the highest percentages of recent births to unmarried women compared to the national average. Conversely, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin had lower percentages than the national average.