Marriage and Divorce Data (MD)

DESCRIPTION:  Marriage data per calendar year - The data were taken from marriage certificates registered with the vital statistics offices of 42 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The certificates for each state were chosen at one of five sampling rates (5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 percent), depending on the total number of marriages performed in the state during the year. Each record includes a weight factor based on the sampling fraction of the reporting state. The demographic data collected include age, race, previous marital status, number of this marriage, education, and natality of both the bride and groom. Information about the marriage ceremony itself includes the month, day, and week of the marriage, and the type of ceremony. Divorce data per calendar year - The data were taken from divorce certificates registered with the vital statistics offices of 47 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The certificates for each state were chosen at one of five sampling rates (5, 10, 20, 50, or 100 percent), depending on the total number of divorces occurring in the state during the year. Each record includes a weight factor based on the sampling fraction of the reporting state. The demographic data collected include age, race, education, and natality of divorcing parties, and the number of this divorce. Information about the divorce itself includes month, day, and week of the divorce.

ORIGINATING AGENCY / PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR(S):  National Center for Health Statistics

RELATED WEB SITES:
Change in the Reporting of Marriage and Divorce Statistics
Full Extraction from NCHS CDs Using SETS

PRI FACULTY, AFFILIATES, AND STUDENTS: Please note that this data is no longer being collected by NCHS. See above link for more information.
 

Year(s) / Wave(s)	Abstract?	Data Location	Input Statement	Documentation Location
1989-1995	No	CD-ROM located in 806 Oswald #972 (2 copies)   POPNET: /nfs/data/public/mardiv /mardata.exp.gz or divdata.exp.gz	SETS extraction program included, see CD for more details POPNET: /nfs/data/public/mardiv /nchsmarr.sas or nchsdivo.sas	CD-ROM located in 806 Oswald #972 (2 copies)
1980-1988	No	POPNET:  /nfs/data/public/mardiv/divs*.gz or marr*.gz	None at present	806 Oswald (1980, 82-84 only) POPNET:  /nfs/data/public/mardiv/*.pdf (unfortunately there is no documentation for 1981 at this time)
1975-1979 Marriage Detail only	No	POPNET: /nfs/data/public/mardiv /MARR*.PUB	None at present	707 Oswald To request hardcopy, click HERE
1968-1988 NCHS CD-ROM	No	806 Oswald CD-ROM (ASCII)	None at present	806 Oswald CD-ROM (PDF format)

KNOWN PROBLEMS:

1) The SAS file to read the 1995 Marriage data had a mislabeled value. Value 33 is labeled "New York City" when in fact, it should be "New York State." This error was found by one of our graduate students. The proc format in the SAS file nchsmarr.sas was fixed by one of our programmers 5-22-02.