The percentage of women who gave birth while unmarried in the United States 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,” uses data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) to analyze trends among women ages 15 to 50.
According to the findings, the share of women with a recent birth who were unmarried dropped by 4.8 percentage points—from 35.7% (or under 1.5 million) in 2011 to 30.9% (or 1.2 million) in 2023.
In total, four million women ages 15 to 50 gave birth in the last year. Of the 1.2 million unmarried women with a recent birth, about 35.5% (around 450,000) lived with an unmarried partner.
The decline was observed across every state and the District of Columbia; in each case, either the percentage decreased or there was no statistically significant change.
Teen births also saw changes: In 2023, an estimated 90.1% of women ages 15 to 19 who had given birth in the previous year were unmarried. However, this age group saw its numbers drop sharply from over 216,000 in 2011 to just over 82,500 in 2023.
Educational attainment played a role as well. In both years studied, nearly half of women with less than a high school education or only a high school diploma/GED who had recently given birth were unmarried—48.9% and 47.9%, respectively, in 2023—figures not significantly different from one another for that year. However, among those with less than a high school education, there was a notable decrease from the rate reported in 2011 (57%). For high school graduates or GED holders, rates did not change significantly between years.
Additionally, more women holding bachelor’s degrees accounted for recent births in 2023 compared to twelve years earlier—11.4% versus just under nine percent.
Geographically, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia reported higher-than-average percentages of recent births to unmarried women compared to national figures. In contrast, Colorado and several other states—including Idaho and Minnesota—had lower-than-average percentages.
Further information on fertility statistics is available on the Census Bureau’s Fertility webpage at https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html.
