The percentage of women who gave birth while unmarried has declined over the past decade, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The report, titled “Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women With a Recent Birth: 2023,” uses data from the 2023 American Community Survey.
In 2011, 35.7% of women with a recent birth were unmarried, representing just under 1.5 million individuals. By 2023, this figure had dropped to 30.9%, or about 1.2 million women.
The data also show that in 2023, four million women aged 15 to 50 gave birth in the previous year. Of the unmarried women with a recent birth, approximately 35.5% (about 450,000) lived with an unmarried partner.
From 2011 to 2023, every state and the District of Columbia either saw a decrease in the percentage of women with a recent birth who were unmarried or no statistically significant change.
Among younger mothers, most births continued to occur outside marriage. In 2023, about 90% of women ages 15 to 19 who had given birth in the last year were unmarried; however, their total number dropped from over 216,000 in 2011 to about 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment also played a role in these trends. In both years studied, nearly half of women with less than a high school education or only a high school diploma or GED who gave birth were unmarried; however, for those without a high school diploma, there was a significant decline from about 57% in 2011 to just under half by 2023.
Additionally, more recent mothers held bachelor’s degrees in 2023 than in previous years—11.4% compared to just under nine percent in 2011.
State-level differences remain notable. States such as Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia reported higher-than-average percentages of recent births among unmarried women. Conversely, states including Colorado and Minnesota recorded lower rates than the national average.
For further details on fertility statistics and related topics from the Census Bureau visit their Fertility webpage at https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html.
