A stock image of a couple cutting a wedding cake.Photo:Getty
Getty
Marriage rates have gone up in the years since the COVID pandemic began, according toa new reportfrom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
This marks a slight recovery in the marriage rate, the organization said — for the last 20 years, the U.S. saw about seven to eight marriages per capita in a year. It also marks an increase of 4% from 2021.
In total, there were more than2,065,000 marriages in 2022, marking the first time the U.S. hit the 2 million mark since 2019.
In addition, the new data found that divorce rates are going down.
As a part of what the CDC called a “longstanding downward trend” over the past two decades, the rates of married couples splitting up in the U.S. went down to just over 675,000, or 2.4 per capita in 2022 — although the most recent low came in 2020, when the rate of divorce was 2.3 per capita. (The CDC excluded California, Hawaii, Indiana, Minnesota and New Mexico from the national data.)
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
According to family therapist Ian Kerner, this increase in married couples in the U.S. could potentially have a few different causes.
“In my practice over the last decade," Kerner toldCNN, “I’ve noticed a gradual shift from the ‘romantic marriage’ to the ‘companionate marriage,’ meaning that people are increasingly choosing spouses at the outset who are more like best friends than passion-partners.”
source: people.com
