40% of U.S. Marriages Are Remarriages

Sometimes once just isn’t enough. Marriage rates in the U.S. have been declining, but over the past few decades the rate of remarriage has been on the rise. Nearly 40 percent of new marriages in America involve at least one person who had been married before, and one in five are between people who both were previously married. The new data from the Pew Research Center show nearly 42 million adults in the U.S. have been married more than once, up from 22 million in 1980, and 14 million in 1960. There is also a significant gender gap: Among previously married men, 65 percent told pollsters they want to remarry or are not sure, while only 43 percent of women said they would.