Marriage is on the decline in the United States and in virtually every other country in the industrialized world. Yet at the same time as marriage rates are declining, it is clearer than ever that marriage matters to Americans. Those who do marry report better health, higher incomes, more sexual satisfaction, and higher levels of well being than those who are single.
This volume was organized to review and assess the scientific evidence about the causes of such trends in marriage and other forms of intimate unions. The contributors address two questions in these pages. Firstly, what do we know about the factors that influence the formation of marriages and other intimate unions, the timing of union formation, and the form that unions take? Secondly, what factors explain the dramatic changes in union formation we have observed over recent decades? Their answers demonstrate as an aggregate that there have been powerful forces reshaping marriage and intimate unions in recent years, and that the confluence of these forces rather than any single factor has brought us to where we are today.
