NEW YORK, NY — It’s no secret that millennials are waiting longer than their parents and grandparents to pop the question. But a new analysis of 258 metros shows twice as many millennials in certain metro areas get married compared to other areas. Such is the case in Utah, home to three metros with the highest share of married millennials.
The Provo-Orem metro, where 56.1 percent of millennials were married, according to the study by Haven Life, paced the country. Among the married millennials in the area, just 68 percent had kids, a noticeably smaller share than the other metros in the top 20, where that number was consistently in the low- to high 70s.
Here are the 10 metros where millennials are getting married most:
Meanwhile, you’re most likely to find unmarried millennials in Gainesville, Florida, or Ithaca, New York. Gainesville, home to the University of Florida, has the smallest share of married millennials at just 21.2 percent — less than half that of Provo-Orem. In Ithaca, that number was 21.8 percent.
In the Haven Life study, millennials were defined as people who were between 21 and 36 years old in 2017. Many of these adults, who were at or near working-age during the Great Recession and ensuing recovery, held off on making major life decisions, including buying a house, having kids and, yes, getting hitched. In fact, the median marriage age is 27.8 years old for women and 29.8 for men. By comparison, the median ages were about 20 and 23 in the 1950s, respectively.
American couples ages 25 to 34 know each other an average of 6 ½ years before tying the knot, The New York Times reported, citing an eHarmony study. That’s a full year-and-a-half more than all other age groups.
Two millennial men who recently got engaged told Patch this week that money and careers played outsized roles in their decisions to pop the question.
Jim Yanosick, 32, a business development manager at Eye-bot Aerial Solutions in Pittsburgh, said he and his girlfriend talked about marriage after three years of dating. He proposed in the fourth year after they had lived together for about a year.
The couple waited to get engaged until they were certain they were mentally prepared for the big step, he said. Both had returned to the Pittsburgh area after making cross-country career moves at about the same time.
“We wanted to be able to go out and explore the world. Do the things we wanted to do as people before getting the government involved in our relationship,” said Yanosick.
The couple also waited until they paid off all their student loans. They didn’t have credit card debt, and paying off the loans before the engagement gave them “peace of mind.”
“I think bringing student debt into a relationship, whether it’s mine or hers, is not really always the best approach there,” said Yanosick. “It was kind of like we were able to start with a clean slate on both sides.”
Yanosick noted he’s in the minority of people getting married in his friend group. He estimated that 30 percent of his friends also decided to tie the knot, aligning well with the study’s findings that around 33 percent of Pittsburgh millennials get married.
Andrew Peng, a 26-year-old civil engineer with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Alexandria, Virginia, proposed to his girlfriend after 10 years of waiting. Money, he said, was one of the main contributing factors for why he waited. But perhaps weighing just as heavily on his mind was that both bounced around job-wise. Peng alone had five jobs over the span of about five years. His now-fiancee had two during that period.
The two casually tossed the idea of marriage around years earlier, but nothing serious. Later, Peng said, they questioned whether they wanted to plan a wedding while constantly moving around. But in January 2018 they were able to find some stability. With a stable job outlook, they bought a house.
And it wasn’t long after that he knew the time was right. He proposed.
“We were actually celebrating our 10-year anniversary, so I figured if we’d made it that long we had a good chance,” said Peng.
Yanosick and Peng are by no means alone in waiting until their financial and career situations were stable. The study highlighted the disparity in wealth between unmarried and married millennials. Perhaps unsurprisingly, research showed that even after adjusting for the size of a household, married millennials tended to be wealthier than those who were single or living with a partner. In fact, from 2013 to 2016, the median total net worth among married households nearly doubled, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. For unmarried young adult households, wealth stagnated.
Married millennials also have higher household incomes and are more likely to own a home. About 56 percent of married millennials own a home compared to just 22.7 percent of unmarried.
The data used in the analysis comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 American Community Survey.