A new study confirms what many Utahns speculate—there are a lot of married people in the state.
Find The Best, a website that researches and interprets data on various topics, used marriage statistics from the U.S. Census' American Community Survey to calculate a state-by-state proportion of wedded to non-wedded individuals. With 57 percent of its adult population hitched, Utah came out on top.
The government-sponsored Utah Marriage Commission seeks to provide the public with information and resources for improving marriage health. Paul Schvaneveldt with the commission said the high proportion of wedded individuals in the state is a result of a marriage-valuing culture.
“The main reason is that Utah has a high proportion of people who are members of the LDS and catholic faiths and they encourage marriage and discourage divorce, and thus you have more people who marry as a result of that religious influence,” said Schvaneveldt.
The new results came from data analysis of Census surveys from 2007 to 2012. Rhode Island, New York and Louisiana had the “least married” populations, tied at a 45.4 percent marriage rate within their adult populations.
