View Resource File >
The context of marriage in the United States involves not only whether and when Americans choose to marry, but also how many times they marry. The majority of recent marriages are first marriages for both spouses. However, divorce rates are higher in the United States compared with European nations,1 and remarried adults have a higher likelihood of divorce than those in their first marriage.
 
In 2008, a series of marital history questions were added to the American Community Survey (ACS). These items, shown in Figure 1, construct a history of marriage, divorce, and widowhood among respondents by recording: (1) whether adults had married, been widowed, or divorced in the past year; (2) how many times adults had married; and (3) the year adults most recently married. One of the strengths of ACS data is that estimates are available for sub-state geographic areas. Further, the ACS provides marital history data on adults of all ages whether they reside in households or group quarters. This report provides information on the following topics: (1) basic marital history measures by sex and age, (2) characteristics of adults by how many times they had married, (3) marital history information by sex and birth cohort, (4) the proportion of couples that include spouses who had married more than once, and (5) geographic variation in the percentage of adults who had married two or more times. In particular, it provides a look at both states and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with relatively high or low proportions of men or women who had married at least twice. This report, which uses 5-year data from the 2008–2012 ACS, presents the first detailed profile of this group provided with this level of geographic detail. Previously, marital history data were collected only in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and smaller ACS samples, which are too small to provide estimates at the MSA level.