The percentage of women who gave birth while unmarried 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, analyzes data from the 2023 American Community Survey.
In 2011, 35.7% of women with a recent birth were unmarried, which equated to under 1.5 million individuals. By 2023, this figure had dropped to 30.9%, or about 1.2 million women. Of these women in 2023, approximately 450,000 (35.5%) lived with an unmarried partner.
The study examined trends across all states and the District of Columbia between 2011 and 2023. It found that the share of women with a recent birth who were unmarried either decreased or showed no statistically significant change in every state.
Among younger women ages 15 to 19 who gave birth in the last year, the proportion who were unmarried was high at 90.1% in 2023. However, the total number of births among unmarried women in this age group dropped sharply from over 216,000 in 2011 to about 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment also played a role in these trends. In both years studied, nearly half of recent mothers without a high school diploma or only a high school diploma (or GED) were unmarried—48.9% and 47.9%, respectively, in 2023—with no significant difference between those groups that year. The percentage for those without a high school education fell from its higher rate of 57% in 2011.
The data also showed an increase in the share of recent mothers holding bachelor’s degrees: up from 8.8% in 2011 to 11.4% in 2023.
Some states had higher rates than the national average for births among unmarried women; these included Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. Conversely, states such as Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and others reported lower rates than the national average.
Further details on fertility statistics can be found on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Fertility webpage at https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html.
