How many minors marry each year in the US and what are the trends since 2010?
Executive summary
Recent research estimates that roughly 300,000 minors were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, with one peer‑reviewed analysis putting the total “nearly 300,000” for 2000–2018 and advocacy reports extending similar totals through 2021 [1] [2] [3]. Annual counts are not centrally tracked, but studies show thousands of child marriages each year in the 2000s and 2010s, concentrated among 16–17‑year‑olds and skewed heavily female (about 86% girls in multiple reports) [1] [3] [4].
1. How many minors marry each year — the best available estimates
There is no single federal repository that records ages at marriage across all 50 states, so researchers have pieced together state marriage certificates and statistical estimates. A 2021 peer‑reviewed study led by Unchained at Last (published in the Journal of Adolescent Health) estimated nearly 300,000 children married in the U.S. from 2000–2018; extrapolated to annual terms, that implies on the order of roughly 15,000–20,000 minors per year across those years, though precise year‑by‑year totals vary by state and methodology [1] [2]. Advocacy analyses that extended the data through 2021 report a cumulative figure of about 315,000 minors from 2000–2021, again implying thousands per year rather than single‑digit or zero counts [3] [5].
2. Who are the minors being married — age and gender patterns
Multiple datasets and analyses show most minors who married were 16 or 17 years old, and the vast majority were girls. One nonprofit’s analysis found 86% of minors married between 2000 and 2018 were girls and most married adult men with an average spouse age gap of about four years [1] [3] [4]. Cases of very young children (12–13) are rare but documented in historical state records compiled by journalists and researchers [6] [7].
3. Trends since 2010 — decline, law changes, and geographic variation
Trends combine falling marriage rates overall and targeted legal reforms. National marriage behavior has shifted toward later first marriage since the 1970s, with fewer households married since 2010, but those macro trends do not directly translate to child‑marriage counts; the latter have declined in jurisdictions that raised the minimum age but persist where legal exceptions remain [8] [9]. Since 2017 a wave of state laws has limited or ended child marriage in many states: advocates and journalists note a steady stream of bans from 2018 onward, and by mid‑2020s between roughly a dozen and 16 states (depending on counting) had set 18 as the minimum age with no exceptions [6] [10] [11]. These legal changes reduced or eliminated child marriages in those states, but the practice continued elsewhere, producing geographic shifts rather than a single uniform national decline [10] [2].
4. Data limitations and why annual counts are uncertain
Available sources emphasize a major gap: no central federal dataset captures age at marriage for every state and year. Researchers filled missing state records with statistical estimation and county‑level proxies; Unchained at Last and academic coauthors used correlations with Census and ACS variables to project missing years and states [1] [12]. Methodological choices — counting minors rather than marriages, dealing with partial state records, and changing state laws — produce wide uncertainty in annual figures and make trend lines sensitive to which states’ records are included [1] [12].
5. Competing interpretations and policy implications
Advocates frame these counts as evidence of a systemic problem that persists because of legal loopholes — they highlight that many child marriages involve substantial age gaps and would meet statutory‑rape criteria outside marriage [5] [3]. Some commentators stress that overall marriage rates and age at first marriage have shifted upward across the population, arguing child marriage is rare relative to adult marriages [8] [13]. Both positions rely on the same underlying records; the disagreement is about emphasis — whether the legal exceptions that permit thousands of minor marriages a decade constitute a national policy failure or a set of local outliers remedied progressively by state law [3] [10].
6. What the record says about recent progress and remaining gaps
State laws have changed rapidly: several states banned child marriage outright in 2018–2025, producing zero counts in those jurisdictions thereafter, while many states retain parental or judicial exceptions that allow minors to marry [6] [10] [11]. The research consensus is that progress is measurable but uneven: where states set 18 with no exceptions, child marriages drop to zero; where exceptions remain, thousands of minors continued to be legally married through the 2010s and into the early 2020s [3] [1].
Limitations: available sources do not provide a single verified annual national tally for every year since 2010; estimates depend on reconstructed state data and statistical projections [1] [12].