At the same time, racial and ethnic differences in marriage are striking. The median age at first marriage is roughly four years higher for black than for white women: 30 versus 26 years, respectively, in 2010.6 At all ages, black Americans display lower marriage rates than do other racial and ethnic groups (see table 1, panel A). Consequently, a far lower proportion of black women have married at least once by age 40. Our tabulations of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2008–12 show that nearly nine out of 10 white and Asian/Pacific Islander women had ever been married by their early 40s, as had more than eight in 10 Hispanic women and more than three-quarters of American Indian/Native Alaskan women. Yet fewer than two-thirds of black women reported having married at least once by the same age.
