By MIKE STOBBE (AP Medical Writer)
The amount of marriages in the US has gone back to the levels before the pandemic, with almost 2.1 million in 2022.
That’s a 4% increase from the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed the information Friday, but hasn’t given out marriage data for last year.
In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic caused many marriage plans to be disrupted, with communities telling people to stay at home and banning big gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Marriages then increased in 2021, but not to pre-pandemic levels. They went up again in 2022 and went beyond 2019 marriage statistics by a small amount.
New York, the District of Columbia and Hawaii had the biggest increases in marriages from 2021 to 2022. Nevada — home to Las Vegas’ famous wedding chapels — continued to have the highest marriage rate in the nation, though it decreased slightly from 2021.
The number and rate of U.S. divorces in 2022 fell slightly, continuing a downward trend, the CDC said.
In general, marriages are much less common than they used to be in the U.S.
According to data going back to 1900, weddings reached their peak in 1946, when the marriage rate was 16.4 per 1,000 people. The rate was above 10 in the early 1980s before beginning a decades-long decline. In 2022, the marriage rate was 6.2 per 1,000 population.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
