Experiments / Right now, around the world / Getting married

Live world view — getting married

How many people are getting married, right now?

— marriages today

Modeled estimate, not a live registry count — see how we calculate this

That's about — marriages every second, worldwide — roughly 40–45 million marriages a year, based on the global crude marriage rate.

Updating live · — UTC

8.2 → 4.9Global marriages per 1,000 people, 1970 → 2020
~28–30Typical age at first marriage today, up from low-20s decades ago
West Bank & GazaAmong the highest marriage rates recorded (~10/1,000)
Peru, QatarAmong the lowest marriage rates recorded

The marriage counter ticks upward using a global crude marriage rate of ~4.9 per 1,000 population per year, spread evenly across the day — a simplification, since real weddings cluster on weekends and in particular seasons far more than any other event on this site. See methodology below.

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Getting married is a scheduled event, not an ongoing state — unlike eating or sleeping, there's no meaningful "% of people currently getting married." Instead, the map below shows a relative-rate index: how each country's marriage rate at this hour compares to its own typical rate, and the hero number above counts marriages accumulated since UTC midnight.

Countries plotted by longitude, latitude and population. Intensity reflects a modeled weekend/seasonal bias in wedding timing, not live registry data — see methodology below.

00:00 UTC

Hover or tap a country for its local time and relative-rate index.

The world's marriage clock

Roughly one to two marriages happen every second worldwide — somewhere between 40 and 45 million a year, based on a global crude marriage rate of around 4.9 per 1,000 population. Like births and deaths, this isn't a share of the population in a given state; it's a steady, ongoing rate, which is why the counter above ticks upward rather than showing a percentage.

4.9

marriages per 1,000 people globally, down from 8.2 in 1970

64%

share of women married or in a union in 2024, down only slightly from 69% in 1970

~28–30

typical age at first marriage today in many countries, up from the early-to-mid 20s decades ago

How we estimate this

The counter above multiplies a global crude marriage rate estimate by elapsed seconds since UTC midnight — a straightforward rate model, not a live registry count. The relative-rate map applies a modeled weekend and seasonal bias, since weddings cluster far more tightly around specific days and months than births or deaths do, layered on top of population by time zone.

The decline is real, but smaller than the headlines suggest

It's easy to find alarming statistics about marriage's decline — and many of the underlying trends are genuine. The US marriage rate fell from a peak of about 12.2 per 1,000 people in 1972 to some of the lowest levels on record today. But Our World in Data's broader measure — the share of women married or in a union at any given time — tells a gentler story: a decline from 69% in 1970 to 64% in 2024. Crude marriage rates have fallen sharply in many individual countries, but a meaningful share of that decline reflects people marrying later and cohabiting more, not necessarily abandoning long-term partnership altogether.

Getting married later, almost everywhere

Across nearly every country with good historical data, the average age at first marriage has risen substantially. A few decades ago, the typical woman in many countries married in her early-to-mid twenties; today that's shifted to the late twenties or early thirties in most of the countries tracked by the UN's World Marriage Data. This shift correlates closely with rising education levels, greater female labor force participation, and urbanization — the same forces that show up repeatedly across fertility, household formation, and other demographic trends on this site.

A wide range across countries

Marriage rates vary enormously depending on local culture, religion, and economic conditions. Countries with high rates of religious observance and traditional family structures tend to post the highest crude marriage rates in the world, while some of the lowest rates cluster in countries with high costs of living, strong social safety nets that reduce the economic incentive to marry, or growing acceptance of long-term cohabitation as an alternative. Divorce patterns diverge in a similar way: in England and Wales, the share of marriages ending in divorce within ten years roughly tripled between the early 1960s and the mid-1990s, before stabilizing in more recent cohorts.

Frequently asked questions

How many marriages happen every day?

Roughly 110,000 to 130,000 worldwide, based on a global crude marriage rate of about 4.9 per 1,000 population applied across the world's population.

Is the marriage rate declining worldwide?

Yes, though more slowly than often assumed. The share of women married or in a union fell only modestly, from 69% in 1970 to 64% in 2024, even as crude marriage rates in individual countries fell more sharply.

At what age do people typically get married now?

Later than in previous generations, almost everywhere. Average age at first marriage has risen from the early-to-mid twenties a few decades ago to the late twenties or early thirties in most tracked countries today.

Has the US marriage rate changed?

Substantially — it peaked at about 12.2 per 1,000 people in 1972 and has fallen since to some of the lowest levels on record, with the decline accelerating slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sources