These States Have the Highest and Lowest Marriage Rates

Overall, the U.S. marriage rate increased 12% in 2022 to 16.7 women getting married within the last year per 1,000 women ages 15 years and older, compared to 14.9 per 1,000 in 2021, according to one-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. This is the highest the national marriage rate has been since 2018, when the rate was at 16.6 per 1,000 women.

Data shows the District of Columbia had the highest marriage rate in the U.S. at 24.4 per 1,000 women in 2022. Meanwhile, Colorado moved up from having the third-highest marriage rate of any state in 2021 to ranking No. 1 in 2022 at 20.9 per 1,000. Many of the 10 states with the highest marriage rates in 2022 were not among those with the highest rates in 2021, with Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, Utah and Wyoming remaining in the top 10 for both years.

The states with the largest increases in their marriage rate from 2021 to 2022 include New Hampshire and South Carolina, both of which saw rates increase by more than 50% year-over-year. Rhode Island and Vermont also saw rates notably climb, while Nebraska’s shot up by 32% to reach a rate of 20.8 per 1,000, making it No. 2 on the overall list.

These are the states with the highest marriage rates in 2022, measured as the number of women married within the last year per 1,000 women aged 15 and over:

By contrast, several states that were among those with the highest marriage rates in 2021 experienced significant declines. Alaska, which had the highest rate in 2021, had the largest percentage decline of any state in 2022. It fell from 23.5 per 1,000 in 2021 to 18.5 per 1,000 a year later.

New Mexico had the lowest marriage rate in 2022, followed by Hawaii. In all, 22 states had marriage rates that were below the national rate.

These are the states with the lowest marriage rate in 2022: