Modeling American marriage patterns

"This article investigates the application of the three-parameter, Coale-McNeil marriage model and some related hyperparameterized specifications to data on the first marriage patterns of American women. Because the model is parametric, it can be used to estimate the parameters of the marriage process for cohorts that have yet to complete their first marriage experience. Empirical evidence from three surveys is reported on the ability of the model to replicate and project observed marriage behavior. The results indicate that the model can be a useful tool for analyzing cohort marriage data and that recent cohorts are showing relatively strong proclivities to both delay and forego marriage. Consistent with earlier work, the results also indicate that education is a powerful covariate of the timing of first marriage and that race is a powerful covariate of its incidence." Data are from the U.S. Current Population Survey for 1976 and 1985 and Cycle III of the National Survey of Family Growth for 1982.