40 percent of Amercian women never married

A federal report shows 38 percent of American women today have never been married, up from 33 percent in 1995. On the flip side, of the 12,279 women interviewed from 2006 to 2010 by the National Center for Health Statistics, 36 percent of women ages 15 to 44 said they are in their first marriage, down from 44 percent in 1982, USA Today reported. The study, released Thursday, also found the median age at first marriage was 25.8 for women. Galena Rhoades of the University of Denver's Center for Marital and Family Studies, said the findings reflect not only the "delay in getting married for the first time" but also "that more people are cohabiting." The study further found nearly half of marriages break up within 20 years. The data shows 52 percent of women's first marriages survived the 20-year mark. Education seemed to be a factor that affects the likelihood of divorce, experts said. For women with at least a bachelor's degree, for example, 78 percent were still married after 20 years, compared to 49 percent of women with some college and 41 percent of women who only hold a high school diploma. Experts say this data is reliable. "Of all the government reports, this series has the best methodology about marriage and divorce," says sociologist Andrew Cherlin, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.