Increasingly, more men than women remain never married across Europe and North America

Over the twentieth century, industrialized societies experienced substantial changes in patterns of union formation, including rising proportions of adults who never married or cohabited. Using census data from 11 countries and European Social Survey data, I examine trends in the prevalence of never-marriage among men and women born throughout the twentieth century and describe how these trends are associated with changes in educational attainment and sex ratios. Across all countries, the proportion of individuals who never married increased markedly, with men consistently more likely than women to remain unmarried. In many societies, women’s educational attainment increased more rapidly than men’s, and cohort-level analyses show that higher levels of educational attainment are associated with larger differences between the proportions of never-married men and women. Analyses incorporating cohabitation using European Social Survey data reveal similar patterns. These findings document a widespread demographic trend across industrialized societies in which successive birth cohorts exhibit an increasing male–female difference in the proportions of individuals who have never married or never cohabited. Although these descriptive analyses do not identify the mechanisms underlying these patterns, they highlight the importance of considering educational expansion and changing partnership dynamics when examining contemporary trends in marriage and cohabitation.