The bar charts in the following pages are about marriage and divorce between 1970 and 2000 in the USA, and the comparison between the marital status of adult Americans from 1970 and 2000. Marital status here includes people who have never married, are married right now, did marry but now have lost their significant other, i.e widowed, and last but not least people who are divorced right now.
The number of marriages had its peak of 2.5 million in the 1970s, and was stable from 1970 until 1980, but then it saw a steady decline in popularity. On the contrary, the number of divorces fluctuated, first going up from 1970 to 1980, but then a dramatic decline in the periods from 1980 until 1990, and furthermore steadily declining from 1990 to 2000.
The marital status of an adult American in the 1970s was mostly married, with some portion of the population never having married, and an insignificant percentage of the population being either widowed or divorced. However, in the 2000s, the number of adult Americans being currently married viewed a decline, and the adult Americans who had never married at that time observed an increase when compared to 1970. The portion of widowed adult Americans saw a small decrease, and the percentage of currently divorced adult Americans at that period in the 2000s had skyrocketed when compared to the period of 1970s.