The U.S. Census Bureau has released a new report showing that the proportion of women who gave birth while unmarried declined over the past decade. According to the report, Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women With a Recent Birth: 2023, the percentage dropped by 4.8 percentage points from 35.7% (under 1.5 million) in 2011 to 30.9% (1.2 million) in 2023.
In total, four million women aged 15 to 50 gave birth in the United States in the last year measured. Of those, about 1.2 million were unmarried at the time of their child’s birth, and approximately 450,000—35.5%—were living with an unmarried partner.
The analysis uses data from the American Community Survey (ACS) for both years studied and compares trends across different demographic groups and states.
From 2011 to 2023, either a decrease or no statistically significant change was observed in every state and Washington D.C., regarding births among unmarried women.
Teenage mothers remained predominantly unmarried; in 2023, about nine out of ten women aged 15 to 19 who had given birth in the previous year were not married. The number of births among this group also dropped sharply from over 216,000 in 2011 to just over 82,500 by 2023.
Educational attainment showed differences as well: In both years studied, nearly half of recent mothers with less than a high school education or only a high school diploma were unmarried at childbirth—a figure that did not significantly differ between these two groups for either year examined. However, there was a notable decline among those without a high school diploma: “In 2011, 57.0% of women with less than a high school education and 49.0% of women who were high school graduates or GED holders with a recent birth were unmarried.” By comparison: “In 2023, 48.9% of women with less than a high school education and 47.9% of high school graduates or GED holders with a recent birth were unmarried.” The share of new mothers holding bachelor’s degrees increased from under nine percent in 2011 to more than eleven percent by last year.
Regional variation remains evident; Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia reported higher-than-average percentages for births among unmarried women compared to national figures.
Conversely,
Colorado,
Idaho,
Iowa,
Kansas,
Minnesota,
New Hampshire,
New Jersey,
New York,
North Dakota,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Virginia,
Vermont,
Washington
and Wisconsin all had lower-than-average rates.
Further information on fertility statistics can be found on the Census Bureau’s Fertility webpage.
