Marriage delayed or marriage forgone? New cohort forecasts of first marriage for US women

Do recent declines in first marriage rates signal that an increasing propor tion of women will remain single their entire lives, or merely that they ar e postponing marriage to older ages? Our forecasts for cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960S suggest that marriage will remain nearly universal for Amer ican women-close to 90 percent of women are predicted to marry. However sep arate forecasts by educational attainment reveal a new socioeconomic patter n of first marriage: Whereas in the past, women with more education were le ss likely to marry, recent college graduates are now forecast to marry at h igher levels despite their later entry into first marriage. This educationa l crossover, which occurs for both black women and white women in recent co horts, suggests that marriage is increasingly becoming a province of the mo st educated, a trend that may become a new source of inequality for future generations. Forecasts presented here use data from the 1995 Current Popula tion Survey and compare estimates from the Hernes model with those from the Coale-McNeil model.