Table 2.

Percent of Young Adults Married Before Age 23, Split by Gender, 23 – 25-Year-Olds

	Women (n = 2,975)	Men (n = 2,900)
Overalla	25.3	15.6
Demographic and family characteristics
Race or ethnicity
White	29.4a	16.1a
Black	10.6b	9.3b
Hispanic	27.5a,c	24.3c
Asian	16.4b,c	12.3a,b
Region
Lives in the south	31.5a	21.4a
Lives outside the south	21.6b	11.7b
Urbanicity
Lives in urban area	24.0a,b	17.3a
Lives in suburban area	22.4b	13.1a
Lives in rural area	37.3a	21.1a
Parents' educational attainment
At least one parent has college degree	15.9a	9.5a
No parent has college degree	28.7b	18.7b
Family income
Family income below $30,000	27.3a	19.3a
Family income above $30,000	24.8a	13.7a
Structure of family of origin
Biological parents married	23.5a	15.8a
Single parent family	22.9a	10.6b
Stepfamily	26.0a	21.3a
Other family structure	35.8b	18.1a
Parent's age at marriage
Parent married at age 18 or younger	36.1a	22.3a
Parent married at age 19 or 20	27.4b	17.3a
Parent married at age 21 or 22	19.9c	11.1b
Parent married at age 23 or older or never married	15.1c	10.6b
Religious affiliation
Conservative Protestant	42.8a	24.2a
Black Protestant	11.4b	8.8b
Mainline Protestant	28.3c	15.3c,d
Catholic	16.6d	12.0b,c
Mormon	39.2a,c,d	29.8a,c,d
Jewish	<1.0e	<1.0e
Other religion	33.1a,c	20.6a,d
No religion	25.1c	15.0c,d
Personal characteristics
Religious service attendance
Attends religious services once a week or more	25.7a	17.9a
Attends religious service less than weekly	25.6a	15.0a
Importance of religion
Religion is very important	25.3a	18.2a
Religion is less than very important	25.9a	14.7a
Abstinence pledge status
Has taken an abstinence pledge	29.2a	17.0a
Has not taken an abstinence pledge	24.2a	15.2a
Educational attainment
Earned high school diploma	24.6a	15.4a
Did not receive high school diploma	29.9a	16.4a
Educational achievement
Cumulative high school GPA of 3.0 or higher	21.8a	13.6a
Cumulative high school GPA below 3.0	25.8a	17.1a
Educational aspirations
Wants to attend college very muchb	22.9a	13.3a
Wants to attend college less than very much	32.0b	19.4b
Cohabitation history
Ever cohabited	25.7a	15.1a
Never cohabited	25.1a	16.1a

Note: Percentages under the same heading (e.g., Race or ethnicity) that do not share subscripts differ at p < .05 according to Wald tests with Bonferroni adjustments. All values are weighted. N varies by variable in question because of missing values.

^aOverall marriage rates for women and men are significantly different at p < .05.

^bReported a 5 — on a scale of 1 to 5 — when asked how much they wanted to attend college.