Wagner Brandon G, Choi Kate H, Cohen Philip N
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
Socius. 2020 Dec 29;6:2378023120980328. doi: 10.1177/2378023120980328. eCollection 2020.
In the social upheaval arising from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we do not yet know how union formation, particularly marriage, has been affected. Using administration records-marriage certificates and applications-gathered from settings representing a variety of COVID-19 experiences in the United States, the authors compare counts of recorded marriages in 2020 against those from the same period in 2019. There is a dramatic decrease in year-to-date cumulative marriages in 2020 compared with 2019 in each case. Similar patterns are observed for the Seattle metropolitan area when analyzing the cumulative number of marriage applications, a leading indicator of marriages in the near future. Year-to-date declines in marriage are unlikely to be due solely to closure of government agencies that administer marriage certification or reporting delays. Together, these findings suggest that marriage has declined during the COVID-19 outbreak and may continue to do so, at least in the short term.
在2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行引发的社会动荡中，我们尚不清楚伴侣关系的形成，尤其是婚姻，受到了怎样的影响。作者利用从美国代表各种COVID-19经历的地区收集的行政记录——结婚证和申请，将2020年记录的婚姻数量与2019年同期的数量进行比较。在每种情况下，与2019年相比，2020年年初至今的累计婚姻数量都有显著下降。在分析婚姻申请的累计数量时，西雅图都会区也观察到了类似模式，婚姻申请数量是近期婚姻的一个领先指标。年初至今婚姻数量的下降不太可能仅仅是由于负责婚姻登记的政府机构关闭或报告延迟。这些发现共同表明，在COVID-19疫情期间，结婚率有所下降，至少在短期内可能会继续下降。
