Marriage rates are up, and divorce rates are down, new data shows

(CNN) —& After Covid-19 lockdowns, 2022 was a year of marriages, according to new data. The number of marriages took a dive around the start of the pandemic, numbers show. For the past two decades, the number of marriages stayed around 7 to 8 per 1,000 people a year, according to& new data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. But in 2020, the marriage rate was down to 5.1 per 1,000 people, the data showed. The rate started to climb the next year, and by 2022, the number of marriages had reached 6.2 per capita and over 2 million in a year, according to the report. Growth in marriage rates may be due to more than just rescheduling, said Marissa Nelson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Washington, DC. Being in lockdown together gave many couples a unique hurdle to overcome, one that made them get intentional about how they approached important things like finances, compromise and autonomy. Many people walked out of that experience& with a better sense of what they need in a life partner, Nelson said. Divorce rates are going down Intentionality may also be behind declining...