The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday reported that more than 2 million marriages took place in the United States in 2022. The CDC said the last time the country had more than 2 million marriages in a single year was 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many social gathering locations.

Is this because these marriages were delayed by the pandemic, or because it’s just how the numbers shook out? According to CDC statistics, the number of marriages in the United States between 2000 and 2019 consistently lands above 2 million. During 2020 and 2021—major years for the pandemic—the number dropped to roughly 1.6 million and 1.9 million respectively.

What does this look like state-by-state? The CDC reported that the numbers of marriages in New York, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii all increased by more than 10%—more than 20% in the case of New York—between 2021 and 2022. Nevada—home of Las Vegas—maintained its status as the state with the highest marriage rates in the United States, but the number of marriages there actually decreased slightly between 2021 and 2022. Nevada has had a steadily decreasing marriage rate since 1990.

So are marriage rates increasing or decreasing overall? According to a study addressing that exact question by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, marriage rates declined between 1982 and 2009, before stabilizing at around 6-7 marriages per every thousand people between then and 2017, and then dropping further in 2018. Aforementioned statistics from the CDC also show a steady decline in marriage rates since the start of the 21st century. The CDC did acknowledge in the NCHS study that, “Marriage has been shown to be correlated with positive health outcomes and longevity.”

This story originally appeared in WORLD. © 2024, reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.