16-Year-Old Marriage

For today, a graph from sociologist Philip N. Cohen:


As Cohen put it, "Ah, the fabulous fifties, when 7.3% of 16-year-old girls were married."

My interpretation of the spike is that a lot of girls married their boyfriends as they headed off to World War II, and even more so when they returned from the war. Or war made people fear the future and want to get married and reproduce sooner. Okay. But why did it take so long to resolve? The rate was still at about 6 percent in 1960. And all of this was in the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction. Hmm.

One bit of good news: we just about reached gender parity starting in 2000.