Growing number of Americans getting remarried

Even though fewer people are tying the knot overall, those who already have been married once aren’t afraid to try again, the latest data from the Pew Research Center shows.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

Of adults who currently are married, nearly one in four, or about 25 percent, have been married before, compared with 13 percent in 1960.

New York--The Pew Research Center’s latest data shows that more U.S. adults than ever before are getting remarried, with nearly one-fourth of adults that currently are married having been previously wed, compared with 13 percent in 1960.

In 2013, four in 10 new marriages included at least one partner that had been married prior, and two in 10 new marriages were between two people who both had been married previously. Pew noted that these numbers have continued to increase for decades, a trend that could prove to be beneficial for jewelers.

Today, almost 42 million U.S. adults have been married more than once, which is nearly the double the 22 million recorded in 1980, and triple the 14 million recorded in 1960.

Pew attributes this increase to two primary demographic trends: the rise in divorce, making more Americans available for remarriage, and the overall aging of the population, which not only increases the amount of widows and widowers available for remarriage but also allows for more time for people to “make, dissolve and remake union,” Pew said.

Pew’s data also suggests another interesting trend--despite the fact that marriage itself is declining in the U.S., previously married people are very willing to remarry. Divorced or widowed adults in America today are about as likely to wed again as they were more than half a century ago.

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Among those who haven’t yet remarried, about 21 percent said that they wanted to remarry and another 31 percent said that they aren’t sure if they would or not, meaning that half of all adults that previously were wed aren’t ruling out remarriage.

Interestingly, there’s a wide gap in these attitudes between men and women.

Among previously married men, 65 percent said that they either want to remarry or aren’t sure if they’d like to or not; however, among women that have been married before, only 43 percent said that they want to remarry.

Not surprising, though, is the fact that older adults are more likely to have been remarried than their younger counterparts, and as the older population grows with the aging of the baby boomers, that gap has widened.

Fifty percent of seniors who have been married before had remarried in 2013, up from 34 percent reported in 1960.

For younger Americans, the number is trending the other way, especially as Americans are getting married for the first time at increasingly older ages. Among those between the ages of 25 and 34, 43 percent had remarried in 2013 compared with 75 percent in 1960.

Michelle Graffis the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, directing the publication’s coverage both online and in print.