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From: mazur@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: New Marriage Statistics
Message-ID: <119100001@inmet>
Date: Wed, 1-Oct-86 11:24:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.119100001
Posted: Wed Oct  1 11:24:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Oct-86 05:45:49 EDT
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Nf-ID: #N:inmet:119100001:000:2045
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!mazur    Oct  1 11:24:00 1986



The following excerpts are from today's (9/30) Boston Globe.  The column
was written by Ellen Goodman.

"By 30 years of age, the study projected, a never-married woman had only
a 20% chance of marrying.  At 35, she had a 5% chance.  At 40, the infamous
Newsweek cover on the study warned, she was 'more likely to be killed by
a terrorist.'"

"The figures looked funny to several people in the Census Bureau, including
Jean Moorman.  ... Moorman is an analyst of marriage and family statistics."

"Moorman and her colleagues did what statisticians do.  They ran the numbers.
Here is what they came out with:

     "Of college-educated, 30-year-old, never-married women, 66% will
      eventually marry.

     "Of college-educated, 35-year-olds, 41% will marry.

     "Of college-educated, 40-year-olds, 23% will marry.
 
     "Of college-educated, 45-year-olds, 11% will marry.

"Is this just a case of dueling statistics?  It's more like a case of dueling
mathematical models.   The Harvard-Yale people got into this whole 
catastrophe as an experiment; for the first time they used something called
a parametric model.  I will spare you the details, but it is regarded by
its designer as risky for these sorts of projections.  The Census Bureau
people used the standard model.

"... But she [Moorman] points to other weaknesses in [the Harvard-Yale study].
The sample, divided and subdivided, was rather puny.  The dimmest prospects 
for black women were based on about 100 in each age group.

"Moreover, what separates these two sets of statistics ... is a dispute
whether educated women are postponing the marriage option or closing it out.
Here too, the trends are in the Census Bureau's direction.  Not only has
the median age of women at first marriage been rising rather dramatically,
especially for educated women, so has the overall marriage rate."

---

Sorry if the flow of the article was disrupted by my editing.  Just thought
people would be interested in this second set of statistics.

Beth Mazur
{ihnp4,mirror,ima}!inmet!mazur