Marriage Rates

Short version:

• In the U.S., Christians and Muslims are more likely to be married than “nones,” with Christians roughly around the national average and Muslims somewhat above unaffiliated but not dramatically higher.
• In Western Europe, marriage is less common overall and the gaps between Christians and the secular are smaller; cohabitation replaces a lot of formal marriage.
• Globally, Muslims (and Hindus) are the most likely to live in marriage-type two-parent families, Christians are in the middle, and religious “nones” are the least likely.
  Below are the best comparable numbers we have, plus caveats.

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1. United States

Surveys here usually measure “currently married” among adults. You can think of “secular” as the religiously unaffiliated (“nones”: atheist, agnostic, “nothing in particular”).

Rough picture (U.S. adults)

Using Pew’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study plus a 2018 follow-up and PRRI’s 2016 survey:

Key takeaways:

• Christians (as a whole): sit roughly at or slightly above the national average, with some subgroups (Mormons, certain white Protestant denominations) substantially above 60% married. (Pew Research Center)
• U.S. Muslims: slightly below the most marriage-heavy Christian groups, but still more likely to be married than the unaffiliated. (PRRI)
• Secular / unaffiliated Americans: clearly less likely to be married; fewer than four-in-ten atheists/agnostics/“nothing in particular” are married in Pew’s breakdown. (Pew Research Center)
  Age structure matters here: atheists/agnostics are much younger on average, which depresses their current-marriage rate, but even when you restrict to over-30s, “nones” are still less likely to be married than Christians. (Pew Research Center)
  If you wanted one very rough U.S. summary:
• Christians: “about half” married
• Muslims: “just under half” married
• Secular/nones: “a bit over two in five” married

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2. Western Europe

Western Europe has:

• Lower marriage and higher cohabitation overall
• Big secularization, especially among native-born populations
• A relatively young Muslim minority with more traditional family norms
  There isn’t a single neat EU-wide table like the U.S. RLS, but the European Social Survey early-2000s data give a reasonable baseline:
  Using ESS 2002 (which covers many European countries, including Western ones):

This is not strictly “Western Europe only” and doesn’t break out Muslims, but it shows the pattern:

• Christians (Protestant/Catholic) are more likely to be married than people with no religion, though the gap is modest compared with the U.S. (ark.ac.uk)
• Over time, marriage has declined and cohabitation has risen, particularly among the secular and non-practicing Christians, so if you measure “married or cohabiting,” the gap between Christians and nones shrinks further.
  On Western European Muslims, the data are more fragmented, but study of survey microdata generally finds:
• Muslims in Europe marry younger and are more likely to be in intact two-parent family households than secular Europeans, even controlling for age. (Pew Research Center)
• Because Europe’s Muslim population is also much younger overall, their current “married” share can look similar to or only slightly above Christians’ in percentage terms, even though marriage is more universal for them by mid-adulthood.
  So a good qualitative summary for Western Europe:
• Christians ≈ somewhat more likely to be married than seculars
• Practicing Christians > non-practicing Christians > religiously unaffiliated
• Muslims: more marriage-oriented norms; likely to be at least as marriage-prone as Christians, and more so than seculars, once age is factored in

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3. Global picture

Globally, we don’t have a simple “% married by religion” table, but we do have very good data on family living arrangements by religion from Pew’s “Religion and Living Arrangements Around the World.”

• Muslims and Hindus live in the largest households (6.4 and 5.7 people on average), Christians are in the middle (4.5), and religious “nones” live in the smallest households (3.7). (Pew Research Center)
• Muslims, Christians and Jews are more likely than other groups to live in two-parent households (married or cohabiting couple with children); Buddhists and religious “nones” are the least likely. (Pew Research Center)
• Living alone or as a couple without children is more common among Christians, Buddhists, Jews and “nones” than among Muslims and Hindus. (Pew Research Center)
  Given that marriage is the overwhelmingly dominant context for two-parent households in most Muslim and Hindu societies (cohabitation is rare and often stigmatized), those patterns imply:
• Muslims (and Hindus) are, on average, the most likely to be married / in marriage-like two-parent families.
• Christians sit in the middle: many married, but also a substantial share living solo or as couples without children, especially in Europe and North America.
• Secular/nones are the least likely to be living in traditional married-with-kids households; they are more likely to live alone, cohabit without marriage, or be in small nuclear units. (Pew Research Center)
  Age composition again matters: Muslims globally are much younger (so more people are not yet of typical marriage age), which would normally lower their current-marriage share; the fact they still show up as very family-centric underscores how strong marriage norms are in Muslim-majority regions. (Pew Research Center)

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4. Putting it side-by-side (very rough summary)

Think of these as ballpark relationships, not precise point estimates:

If you tell me which exact comparison you care about most (e.g., “U.S. Muslims vs U.S. seculars”, or “global Muslims vs global Christians”), I can drill down and try to get as close as possible to hard percentages for that slice.