It’s well known that people in the U.S. are getting married later in life. Today I heard that same fact on the SYSK Podcast, but it struck me that we’re also living longer. Sure we’re getting married later in terms of age, but what percent of our lives go by before we get married?
I compiled the data from here and here and graphed the ratio of age at first marriage compared to life expectancy.
So yes, looking at the past few decades it seems that more of our lives are elapsing before getting married, but nothing compared to the earlier part of the century. A typical man in 1900 married after half of his life was already over.