Is Your MN City A 'Marriage Garden' Or 'Marriage Desert'? New Report

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Where you live in the Twin Cities may say a lot about how likely your neighbors are to be married, according to a new national report.

The Institute for Family Studies, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, released "Marriage Deserts: Mapping America's Family Divide" this month. The report, written by Chris Bullivant and Ken Burchfiel, uses 2020 Census data to rank areas across the U.S. by the share of householders ages 15 to 64 who are married.

The researchers call areas where fewer than 33 percent of those householders are married "marriage deserts." Areas where at least 61 percent are married are "marriage gardens."

The study breaks the country into Census areas known as Public Use Microdata Areas, which typically hold 100,000 to 200,000 people each. The report then ranked the 100 areas with the lowest marriage shares and the 100 with the highest.

Four Minnesota areas made those lists: two in Minneapolis on the desert side, and two in the suburbs on the garden side.

Minnesota marriage deserts

No. 30: Hennepin County, Minneapolis (East): 20 percent married, 44,941 householders ages 15 to 64

No. 46: Hennepin County, Minneapolis (Central): 21 percent married, 41,151 householders ages 15 to 64

In both Minneapolis areas, roughly four out of five householders ages 15 to 64 are not married. No St. Paul area appeared on the top 100 desert list.

Minnesota marriage gardens

No. 58: Anoka County (North), including Andover, Ramsey, Ham Lake and East Bethel: 68 percent married, 32,357 householders ages 15 to 64
No. 62: Dakota County (South), including Lakeville and Farmington: 68 percent married, 29,650 householders ages 15 to 64

The report also grouped neighboring areas that meet the same threshold into larger clusters and ranked them by population.

The "Suburban Twin Cities Marriage Garden" ranked 10th largest in the nation, with 301,877 householders ages 15 to 64.

The Twin Cities and Chicago suburbs were the only Midwest clusters in the top 10.

The split between Minneapolis and its suburbs mirrors a pattern the report found nationwide.

Marriage gardens are overwhelmingly suburban and exurban, the authors wrote, while marriage deserts tend to sit in the centers of major cities.

Nationally, the lowest marriage share belonged to part of Detroit, at 13 percent. Close behind was a central Milwaukee area at 14 percent, which ranked second in the nation.

The highest share was in northwest Fort Bend County, Texas, at 79 percent.

The authors point to research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, which found that the share of two-parent homes in a community was the strongest predictor of upward mobility for children growing up there.

Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, wrote on X that the report shows a 70-point gap in children's odds of growing up with married parents between the nation's top married-family deserts and gardens.

The report notes that its rankings are descriptive. It does not attempt to explain why the patterns exist or to show that marriage rates cause economic or social outcomes.

The full report, including interactive maps that show every area in the country, is available on the Institute for Family Studies website.