The Census Bureau released a report on marriage today that finds – surprise! – both men and women are waiting longer before marrying for the first time.

As far as I could tell, the report offers little new to the conversation about trends in marriage and the changing face of the American family. It notes that marriage is still at a historical low, but that states in the South and West rank among the highest for marriage. Similarly, many of these same states also have higher divorce rates.  


Some of the other key findings include:  



-Recently divorced women and their children who typically lived with them were more financially strained compared with others, having higher poverty rates, lower incomes and greater use of public assistance despite higher rates of participation in the labor force.


-Roughly 1.1 million children, or 1.5 percent of all children, lived in 2009 in the home of a parent who divorced in the previous year.


-Delaware and Wyoming ranked at the top for states with more widowers (5.4 per 1,000 men), while Hawaii had the most widows (10.3 per 1,000 women).


For those who are interested in the subject, I think far more substantial information about marriage came out of the Pew Research Center study last November, which I wrote about in depth here