The typical U.S. marriage has lasted about 20 years. Marriages that end in divorce lasted a median of about 8 to 13 years, depending on the survey. The 20-year figure is the median for marriages intact in 2024, from Census survey data. First marriages that ended in divorce lasted a median of 8 years in 2009 Census data. First marriages that ended in divorce in 2020 lasted 12 to 13 years. Counted from the wedding day, about half of first marriages reach 20 years. The share was 52% for women and 56% for men in CDC data from 2006 to 2010.
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Why the numbers online conflict
Search for the average length of marriage and the answers arrive all at once: 7 years, 8, 19, 20, often on the same results page. Most are real. Each was counted in a different room. Before comparing them, ask who got counted: marriages still going, marriages that ended, or every first marriage followed from the wedding day.
The first room holds marriages that are intact right now: a survey asks married people what year they married, and the middle answer becomes the median length of current marriages. That figure runs long, because everyone in the room is still together. The second room holds marriages that ended in divorce, measured by how long they lasted, and that figure runs short because most endings come early. The third follows every first marriage from the wedding day forward and checks what share is still intact at 5, 10, or 20 years.
Each of the three answers a different question, so none of them gets to be "the" average on its own. If you want to know how long couples have been together, use the first; if you want to know when divorces tend to happen, use the second; and if you want the chance that a new marriage reaches a given year, use the third. The table below lines up five published figures by who each one counts.
A divorce rate answers yet another question, about how many marriages end in a year. CDC counted a provisional 2.4 divorces per 1,000 people in 2023 in 45 reporting states and D.C., a yearly count explained in what the 2.4 divorce rate measures. For counts, rates, and age at marriage, see U.S. marriage counts, rates, and age.
Five published marriage-length figures and what each one counts
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| Measure | Who is counted | Figure | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median length of current marriages | People married at the time of the survey | 20 years | 2024 | USAFacts analysis of Census ACS table B12504 |
| Median length of current marriages by marriage order | Currently married people | 21 years first, 17 second, 13 third or later | 2018 | NCFMR, ACS |
| Median length of first marriages that ended in divorce | People 15 and over whose first marriage ended in divorce | 8.0 years, men and women | 2009 | Census P70-125, SIPP |
| Median length of marriage at first divorce | People whose first divorce happened that year | 13 years men, 12 years women | 2020 (experimental data) | NCFMR, ACS |
| Chance a first marriage is intact at 20 years | Women and men ages 15 to 44 who had married | 52% women, 56% men | 2006 to 2010 | CDC NSFG, NHSR 49 |
Why do they differ? Each row starts from a different group of marriages, described in the first section.
How to read it: Match the row to your question, then quote its year and who is counted.
Download the table (CSV) ↓How long current marriages have lasted
Half of U.S. marriages intact in 2024 had lasted 20 years or more, according to a USAFacts analysis of Census American Community Survey table B12504. Zoom in to the state map and the middle answer moves: Vermont had the longest median at 22.6 years, and Alaska had the shortest at 16.3 years.
Which marriage someone is in matters too. In 2018 American Community Survey data analyzed by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, the overall median was 19 years, with 21 years for first marriages, 17 for second marriages, and 13 for people married three or more times. The same profile found that 28% of currently married people had married in the past 10 years.
Why do later marriages look shorter? A second or third marriage starts after an earlier one ended, so it has had less time to add years, and its shorter median says little about how long it will last.
How long marriages that end in divorce last
Among people whose first marriage ended in divorce, the median length of that marriage was 8.0 years for both men and women, in Census data for 2009. The median time from wedding to separation was 6.7 years for men and 6.6 years for women, and the step from separation to divorce took a median of under a year.
You will often see "8.2 years" quoted as the Census figure. The report's overall figure is 8.0 years, and its table shows 8.2 only for Asian men, so 8.2 matches only one small group's row in that table. If you cite the Census figure, use 8.0 and say the year.
A newer estimate runs longer. Among people whose first divorce happened in 2020, the median marriage had lasted 13 years for men and 12 years for women, up from about 11 years in 2010, according to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research using experimental Census data. That figure counts the divorces in a single year, while the 8.0 counts every first divorce in people's histories, so the two do not form a clean trend line.
What share of first marriages reach 5, 10, and 20 years
The CDC National Survey of Family Growth estimated how likely a first marriage is to stay intact, meaning no separation or divorce. For women ages 15 to 44 in 2006 to 2010, the chance was 80% at 5 years, 68% at 10 years, 60% at 15 years, and 52% at 20 years. For men of the same ages it was 81%, 70%, 62%, and 56%.
Census data grouped by wedding year tell a similar story. Among men first married from 1970 to 1974, 58.0% reached their 20th anniversary, compared with 54.1% of men married from 1985 to 1989; for women the shares were 56.5% and 50.8%. Census notes that the gap for men is not statistically significant, and it describes marriage longevity as changing little across recent groups.
What percentage of marriages last 25, 40, or 50 years
Among couples who were married when Census surveyed them in 2009, 83% had reached at least their 5th anniversary, 55% had been married at least 15 years, 35% had reached their 25th, and 6% had passed their 50th. In 2018 data analyzed by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 41% of currently married people had reached 25 years and 8% had reached 50.
Counted from the wedding day, the Census 2009 report found that 60.1% of men and 49.7% of women first married from 1960 to 1964 had reached their 40th anniversary. Surveys can only ask living people, so marriages that ended when a spouse died have fewer voices in the room.
When divorces happen
The early years carry the most risk. Census reports that first marriages are most likely to end in divorce in their early years, and that about 13% of women's first marriages had ended in divorce by year 5, in 2014 data. For same-sex couples, the evidence on how divorce rates compare for female and male couples comes mostly from registers abroad.
The CDC survival numbers show the same shape. Among women's first marriages, about 20 in 100 ended in the first 5 years, mostly by separation or divorce, which works out to roughly 4 a year. Another 12 in 100 ended in years 5 to 10, about 2.4 a year, and 8 more ended in each of the next two 5-year spans, about 1.6 a year. Those yearly paces are our arithmetic on the published probabilities.
Second marriages
Second marriages that ended in divorce lasted a median of 8.5 years for men and 8.0 years for women, in Census data for 2009, and Census said that did not differ from first marriages. Among second marriages still intact, the 2018 median length was 17 years. None of the sources here publishes a current divorce rate for second marriages.
Picture 100 first marriages
Picture 100 first marriages that follow the CDC probabilities for women. By year 5, 20 have ended. By year 10, 32 have ended, and by year 20, 48 have ended while 52 are still going.
Of the 48 that ended, 20 ended in the first 5 years and 12 more by year 10, so the middle one, the 24th, ended somewhere between years 5 and 10. Because most endings come early, the divorce median stays short.
Now walk into the room a survey of married couples would see. The 52 still married at year 20 have each lasted at least 20 years, and they share the room only with newer marriages, which is one reason the current-marriage median lands near 20 years.
Look up your year: how many first marriages are still intact
These shares start from a marriage that has already lasted a while. Among first marriages still intact at 5 years, about 65% of women's and 69% of men's reached 20 years. From 10 years it was about 76% and 80%, and from 15 years about 87% and 90%, partly because fewer years remain to reach 20.
A like-for-like view is the chance of lasting the next 5 years. For women's first marriages it was 80% from the wedding, 85% from year 5, 88% from year 10, and 87% from year 15, and for men's it was 81%, 86%, 89%, and 90%. The yearly risk eases after the early years and then levels off. These follow-on shares are our arithmetic on the CDC figures, describing a crowd of couples who were ages 15 to 44 when surveyed, so read them as a picture of that crowd, not a forecast for one marriage.
What this means for the dating pool
Marriages that end send people back into the dating pool. Among people whose first marriage ended in divorce and who later remarried, the median time from divorce to remarriage was 3.8 years for men and 3.7 years for women, in Census data for 2009. That median only counts people who did remarry, so it does not describe the wait for everyone who divorces.
If you are wondering who is available near you, the dating pool calculator has a "Not currently married" filter that counts divorced, widowed, and never-married adults together. You can set it beside the share of U.S. men who are single and the share of U.S. women who are single. For the years before a wedding, see how long couples date before marriage and the median age at first marriage.
Limits of these numbers
Some of the newest published figures are old. The divorce-duration and remarriage medians are from 2009, the CDC survival shares from 2006 to 2010, and the cohort anniversary shares from 2014. The CDC shares cover people ages 15 to 44, so 20-year survival mostly reflects people who married young.
Current-marriage medians also rise and fall with the age of the married population as well as with how stable marriages are. The 2024 national figure comes from USAFacts, which analyzed the Census table; we did not read it from that table directly.
