New data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate a decline in the percentage of women giving birth while unmarried over the past decade. According to the report, Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women With a Recent Birth: 2023, 30.9% of women with a recent birth were unmarried in 2023, down from 35.7% in 2011.
In total, four million women ages 15 to 50 gave birth in the last year. Of these, about 1.2 million were unmarried, and roughly 450,000 lived with an unmarried partner.
The findings are based on data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), which allows for comparisons with earlier statistics using the ACS 1-year estimates from 2011.
Between 2011 and 2023, either a decrease or no statistically significant change was observed in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia regarding the percentage of women with a recent birth who were unmarried.
Teenage births among unmarried women also declined during this period. In 2023, 90.1% of women ages 15 to 19 who had given birth in the previous year were unmarried. However, their numbers dropped significantly—from over 216,000 in 2011 to about 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment continues to play a role in these trends. In both years studied, nearly half of recent mothers without a high school diploma or only holding a GED were unmarried; however, there was a notable decrease among those without a high school education—from 57% in 2011 to just under half by 2023. The share among high school graduates or GED holders did not show significant change over time.
There was also an increase in new mothers holding bachelor’s degrees—rising from about nine percent in 2011 to more than eleven percent by last year.
Some states reported higher rates of births among unmarried women than the national average: Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. Conversely, Colorado and several other states had lower rates compared to national figures.
For additional details on fertility statistics and related topics from the Census Bureau visit their Fertility webpage at https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html.
