The percentage of women who gave birth while unmarried has declined over the past decade, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. The report, titled “Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women With a Recent Birth: 2023,” found that in 2023, 30.9% of women with a recent birth were unmarried, down from 35.7% in 2011. This represents a decrease of 4.8 percentage points, or about 300,000 fewer unmarried women giving birth compared to twelve years ago.
The data are based on the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS). In total, four million women ages 15 to 50 gave birth in the last year. Of the approximately 1.2 million unmarried women with a recent birth, about 35.5%—or roughly 450,000—were living with an unmarried partner.
Between 2011 and 2023, every state and the District of Columbia saw either a decrease or no significant change in the percentage of recent births to unmarried women.
Among younger mothers ages 15 to 19 who had given birth in the past year, most were unmarried: in 2023, this figure was at 90.1%. However, the number of unmarried teenage mothers dropped significantly from more than 216,000 in 2011 to just over 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment also played a role in these trends. In both years studied, nearly half of women with less than a high school education or only a high school diploma who gave birth were unmarried; however, there was a notable decline among those without a high school diploma—from 57% in 2011 to just under half (48.9%) in 2023.
The proportion of recent mothers holding at least a bachelor’s degree increased from under nine percent (8.8%) in 2011 to over eleven percent (11.4%) by last year.
Some states reported higher percentages of births to unmarried women than the national average; these included Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. States such as Colorado, Idaho and Minnesota had lower rates than the national average.
For further information on fertility statistics and related topics from the Census Bureau’s research and surveys can be found on their Fertility webpage.
