What is the likelihood that a woman age 30-40 will marry?

US Census data tells us how many women are married, widowed, divorced
and have never married for different age ranges.  The most-recent
Census information on marriage says that 30% of the women in the 30-40
age range are widowed, divorced or never married.  This 6.4 million
women are composed of about 60% who have never married and 40%
divorced, with a small percentage who are widowed.

The "never married" category drops consistently with age to 11.8% for
40-44 year olds to less 3.5% for women older than 75.  A simplistic
answer would be to say that the 30% unmarried with reduce to 3.5%
after age 75 -- or that more than 88% will marry.  The obvious
difficulty is the assumption that one might need to live to age 75 to
marry, but life expectancy for American women is higher than that.

A more complete analysis of all the "never marrieds" above age 40 says
that xx% aren't married.  This would take into account more recent
rises in single-parent households.  By 2000, there were 4.2 million
(6.8%) of the 61.8 million women above age 40 who were 'never
married.'  This would yield a lower forecast that 77% will marry.

Because we can't tell what will happen in the future, a safe estimate
would be:

"Unmarried women between ages 30 and 40 have between a 77% and 88%
chance that they marry."

The U.S. Census Bureau released its most recent studies of families
and living arrangements in March, 2002.  They are available on the
"Families and Living Arrangements" page:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA
Married

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 06 Oct 2002 21:09 PDT

Thanks for the kind words.  I had to answer it quickly before the GA
researchers took you into "clarification hell":

*  what country are you in?
*  is this to disprove the Urban Legend about liklihood of getting
married after age 30?
*  can you post a picture so we can tell what the real liklihood is?

Hope to see you again in Google Answers!

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Request for Answer Clarification by bg002h-ga on 08 Oct 2002 08:32 PDT

hehe, yeah, my question was motivated by the legend that a woman over
30 is more likely to be hit by a car and killed than to get married,
which is obviously not true.  As far as my odds go, I haven't a clue;
I'm not a woman, and I'm 22.

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 08 Oct 2002 08:55 PDT

Thanks bg!

Great answer!  Thanks for the link.  You answered my question exactly.
Looking back on it, I meant to ask what is the probability that a
woman age 30-40 will marry before turning 41; however, your answer was
so well supported and explained, that it was easy to calculate that
probability 0.118/(0.3*0.6) (an analogous calculation to the one in
your answer), or about 0.66.  Thank you very much!

Isn't your result too high because your sample is too inclusive?  
Don't you need to deduct the women in the 30-plus age group who
married BEFORE they were 30 to determine the probablitiy of post-30
marriage?