An Evaluation of Three Ways of Measuring Marriage Rates

PWP-CCPR-2016-035

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the ability of three measures to describe the evolution of marriage rates. We nd that the two measures commonly used to study changes in marriage rates, the number of new marriages per population and the share of individuals currently or ever married within an age range, generally lead to incorrect inference. A third measure, the share of individuals ever married by a given age in a given cohort, is better suited to analyze changes in marriage rates.