Want to get married, then don’t grow up in New York. According to a new analysis of data compiled by a team of Harvard economists, spending one’s childhood in places like Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and New York renders people about ten percentage points less likely to marry relative to the balance of the United States.
According to writers David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy, no place encourages marriage like the Mountain West, particularly in heavily Morman areas of Utah, southern Idaho and portions of Colorado. The database covers more than five million people who moved as children during the nineteen eightees and ninetees. Among the country’s fifty largest counties, the top five in terms of reducing one’s likelihood of getting married would all be in the New York area.
One caveat to the research – all of these statistics analyze a child’s odds of being married by the age of twenty-six. According to the researchers, growing up in places like New York and Washington does not simply delay marriage. The researchers found very similar patterns when they analyzed data up to the age of thirty. Children who grow up in New York appear less likely to be married by the age of twenty six, thirty, or ever.