Remarriage is on the rise, according to a new Pew Research poll.
In the study, Pew found that 40 percent of marriages today involve at least one party who has previously been part of the decision to file for divorce. Half of that number — 20 percent — are marriages where both spouses have been previously married.
“There’s so much dialogue right now about the retreat from marriage in general,” Gretchen Livingston, Senior Researcher at Pew and author of the study, told The Huffington Post. “I was really curious to juxtapose that with what’s going on with remarriage.”
Livingston said that she analyzed data from the 2013 American Community Survey and the 1960 and 1980 censuses and found “that the number of remarried adults in the US has hit 42 million, which is almost double the amount recorded in 1980 and triple the amount in 1960.”
While that’s good news in general for marriage, a deeper look at the demographics shows that not every group is on board with getting hitched again once their divorce forms are final. For example, the age group that is 65 and older — so-called “senior citizens” — are now living longer, giving them more time to get widowed or divorced and remarry. The number of those eligible who have decided to remarry has jumped from 34 percent in 1960 to 50 percent in 2013. Conversely, 75 percent of young people eligible for remarriage in 1960 did so, but that number has tumbled to 43 percent in 2013. (Age group was ID’d as “25 to 34.”)
Overall, women were less likely to want to remarry than men.
What do you think about the findings, readers? If you’ve recently filed divorce papers — or if some time has passed since the occasion — do you see remarriage as a viable option in the years ahead? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.