"The median age of first marriage was 27.1 years for men and 25.8 years for women last year, up from 23.2 and 20.8 years, respectively, 25 years earlier, according to new information on America's families and households  released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to Families and Living Arrangements: 2005, the proportion of households consisting of one person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2005. In 2005, 10 percent of the nation's households  contained five or more people, down from 21 percent in 1970. During the same time period, average household size declined from 3.14 to 2.57 people."

"Once, virtually all Americans had married by their mid-40's. Now, many American men without college degrees find themselves still single as they approach middle age.

About 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates. That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages 35 to 39, the portion  jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time.

At virtually every level of education, fewer Americans are marrying. But the decline is most pronounced among men with less education. Even marriage rates among female professionals over 40 have stabilized in recent years.

The decline in marriage can be traced to many factors, experts say, including the greater economic independence of women and the greater acceptance of couples living together outside of marriage.

...Perhaps most significant, many men without college degrees are not marrying because the pool of women in their social circles - those without college degrees - has shrunk. And the dwindling pool of women in this category often  look for a mate with more education and hence better financial prospects."

Fewer and fewer American adults are hearing the melody of wedding bells. And even among those American men and women who do find their way to the wedding chapel, the music of conjugal carols have often given way in  recent decades to the cacophony of divorce-court wrangling.

Just how completely America has been transformed by the silence of wedding bells and the rancor of the divorce court is all too evident in an analysis recently released by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Scrutinizing data  from the federal government's Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, the PRB analysts highlight "the increase in the proportion of adults who are not married" as "one of the biggest demographic stories of  the past several decades." "Between 1960 and 2003," the PRB team reports, "the share of Americans age 15 or older who have never been married increased from 22 percent to 29 percent, and the share of Americans who are  divorced increased from 2 percent to 10 percent."

Over time, the plummeting marriage rate and the simmering divorce rate have transformed the character of American society. The PRB analysts thus identify "rising age at first marriage [and] high divorce rates" as key reasons for  "dramatic decline in the share of married-couple families, and the corresponding increase in the share of single-parent families." The data indeed indicate that between 1960 and 1983, "the proportion of families with children that were  headed by a single parent increased from 9 percent to 28 percent." The PRB team further notes that "in some large cities...the share of female-headed families approaches 50 percent (for example, Cleveland, Detroit, and Newark,  N.J.)."

Though the PRB analysts are statisticians, they recognize the human distress behind the numbers they parse. In particular, they view with "concern" the increase in the number of female-headed households "because people living in  female-headed families typically have access to fewer economic or human resources than people in married-couple families." Data collected for 2003 in fact show that "about 37 percent of families maintained by women with children  were poor, nearly six times the rate for married couples with children." Poverty rates run especially high among households with children headed by black and Latina women: 42 percent of such black households and 46 percent of  such Hispanic households are mired in poverty.

Before even more American children find themselves trapped in poverty, perhaps it is time that America put its wedding bells back in melodious motion and its divorce courts into silent quiescence.