Center for Marriage and Families

Why do we so carefully measure and widely publicize leading U.S. economic indicators, and do everything we can to improve them, while rarely bothering to measure our leading marriage indicators, or try to do anything as a society to improve them? Why is there is no equivalent effort to focus on marriage?

We don’t have, as in the case of the economy, generally accepted leading measurements for marriage, or even much of a sense that such measurements would truly matter. As a result, to whatever degree we do have them, they actually don’t matter much.

But the U.S. needs a Marriage Index, because unless we know where we are, and why that matters, we can’t know where to go; because no social progress is possible without widely shared, trackable goals; because for any society that cares about its future, leading marriage indicators are as important as leading economic indicators.

The absence of a clear, compelling, and commonly-agreed upon set of leading marriage indicators prevents us from focusing clearly on the health of marriage in America. Consequently, policy makers and opinion leaders rarely seem to care about marriage trends, or even notice them.

Now, this situation can change. A bipartisan group of scholars and leaders has now carefully developed a set of leading marriage indicators—fundamental, well-chosen measurements that accurately reveal the direction and overall health of marriage as a U.S. social institution.