Depression and Pre-Depression Marriage Rates: A Philadelphia Study

Abstract

roblems. business is good, marriage and divorce rates go up. When business is bad, they go down. In these words, Stouffer and Spencer summarized their own studies of marriage and divorce rate in recent years, as well as the studies of Thomas, Sorokin, Ogburn and others.' Most of the studies of marriage rates leave unanswered, however, two very important groups of questions. First, are these fluctuations in the general marriage rate distributed evenly in the population, or do they vary from one population element to another? During the recent depression for example, when the marriage rate as a whole fell, did it fall evenly in all classes and groups, did it fall in some and not in others, did it even rise in some while falling in others? Second, if such variations exist, how are they related to group differentials? What factors seem to determine such variations? It must be evident that such differentials in marriage rates, if they exist, are of very great importance in the study of family and population problems. Methodology.This study represents an effort to answer these questions on the basis of the experience of Philadelphia, whose population of almost two million made it the third largest city in the United States in I930. The study is based upon 20,000 marriages, in which the male lived in Philadelphia at the time of the marriage. In point of time, the 20,000 marriages are grouped about the census year I930. Ten thousand of these were consecutive cases from January i, i928, to November i, i929; the other Io,ooo covered the periods November I, 1931 to July I, I932; October I, I932 to March i, I933; and January 2, 1935 to May I5, 1935. The first series are henceforth referred to as the predepression series; the latter, as the depression series. The data utilized were taken from the Philadelphia Marriage License Bureau, and from the bureaus of nearby towns and Gretna Greens to which marrying Philadelphians are wont at times to resort.