The percentage of women who gave birth while unmarried in the United States 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,” found that 30.9% of women with a recent birth were unmarried in 2023, compared to 35.7% in 2011. This represents a decrease of 4.8 percentage points, or roughly 300,000 fewer unmarried mothers.
In total, four million women ages 15 to 50 gave birth in the last year. Of these, about 1.2 million were unmarried at the time of their child’s birth. Among this group, approximately 450,000 (35.5%) lived with an unmarried partner.
The findings are based on data from the American Community Survey (ACS) for both years and include comparisons with an earlier report using estimates from 2011.
Between 2011 and 2023, every state and the District of Columbia saw either a decrease or no statistically significant change in the percentage of women with a recent birth who were unmarried.
Teen births among unmarried women also declined significantly during this period. In 2023, about nine out of ten (90.1%) women ages 15 to 19 who had given birth in the previous year were unmarried; however, their total number dropped by more than half—from over 216,000 in 2011 to around 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment showed continued disparities but some changes as well. In both years studied:
– Nearly half of women with less than a high school education or only a high school diploma/GED who had recently given birth were unmarried.
– The share was not significantly different between these two educational groups.
– However, there was a notable decline among those without a high school diploma: from 57% unmarried in this group in 2011 to just under half (48.9%) by 2023.
– For high school graduates or GED holders with recent births who were unmarried, there was no significant change between years.
– The proportion of mothers with bachelor’s degrees increased from about one out of twelve (8.8%) in 2011 to more than one out of nine (11.4%) by last year.
State-level differences remain pronounced:
– Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia reported higher percentages of recent births to unmarried women than the national average.
– Colorado and several other states—including Idaho and Minnesota—had lower rates than average.
Further information on fertility trends is available on the Census Bureau’s Fertility webpage at https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html.
