Researchers underscore link between decline of marriage, plummeting fertility rates

CNA Staff, Jan 10, 2025 / 07:00 am

Researchers in Canada are highlighting the link that declining marriage rates are playing in the overall decline in fertility rates in North America and around the world. 

In their 2024 book “I...Do? Why Marriage Still Matters,” published in November 2024, Andrea Mrozek and Peter Jon Mitchell — both associates at the Ontario-based think tank Cardus — assert that the decline of marriage is “one contributing issue” to plummeting fertility in Western countries. 

The fertility rate in Canada presently sits at about 1.3 births per woman, slightly less than the United States, though the fertility rates of both countries — along with nearly all of Western Europe and numerous other countries — are significantly beneath the “replacement rate” necessary to keep a population stable. 

Mitchell told CNA it remains the case that “most children are born to married parents” and that in Canada “we have seen a significant portion of young adults in their late 20s and early 30s living unpartnered.”

“The age at which people enter marriage has increased as has the age of mothers at first birth,” he noted. “Family size has been on the decline for decades, and the fertility window for many women entering marriage at later ages has compressed.”

Mitchell acknowledged that “below replacement fertility is complex with many contributing factors,” but “we think the correlation between marriage and fertility remains.”

‘Promote and model marriage’

The ongoing crash in fertility in countries around the world has raised alarm bells in numerous quarters, from commentators and demographers to policy experts and governments. 

Government leaders have struggled to address falling birth rates in their own countries. In South Korea, the Seoul metropolitan government this year will begin offering housing subsidies to newlywed couples, in part so husbands and wives might have more children. 

Italy is offering “baby bonuses” to couples, doling out a monthly allowance for the first year of a new baby’s life. And the Greek government has raised its own baby allowance in a bid to fight the country’s low fertility.

Those countries and others have similarly seen sharp drops in marriage rates in recent decades. Divorce rates are also up in many cases. 

Though the researchers are advocates of more marriage, Mitchell acknowledged the possibility that “marriage rates could rise without increasing fertility.” 

“Encouraging a healthy marriage culture would still be worth the effort because marriage is good for individuals and for communities,” he noted. Still, other research has further indicated a significant link between marriage and fertility.

In some cases studies have indicated that crashing fertility is not linked only to social trends. A 2023 study found “evidence of an association” between exposure to some insecticides and “lower sperm concentration in adults,” for instance.

Yet most of the debate around low birth rates has focused on personal and cultural choices. And the decline of marriage, Mitchell told CNA, is “largely a cultural problem.”

Among Catholics, experts have argued that the Church needs to be focused at the parish level to drive up plunging marriage rates among the faithful. Catholic marriage rates dropped by about 70% between 1969 and 2019, according to data from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

The collapse reflects the broader decline of marriage rates throughout the United States, with a record 25% of 40-year-olds in the U.S. currently having never been married, according to Pew Research data.

“Rebuilding a healthy marriage culture will be slow work, but worth the effort,” Mitchell said. “We need to tell better stories about marriage and to communicate the benefits of marriage to young adults. Social institutions like faith and learning communities can play a role in this effort.”

Governments are not the principal leaders of a healthy marriage culture, he admitted, but the government “certainly has an interest in healthy, stable family life.”

“A good place to start is by removing barriers to marriage,” he suggested. “Tax and benefits policies can unintentionally penalize individuals by clawing back benefits that leave people worse off when they marry.”

“Absent a marriage-friendly culture, fertility rates will not increase,” the writers argue in their book.