Why are less people getting married?

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I think the situation in Europe is different from the US. People in Europe are simply not marrying.

In the US, most people seem to desire marriage. Members of my wife's family have generally gotten married and most have had children. It's my impression that Americans in general want to get married unlike Europeans. The people who aren't getting married are probably discouraged by socioeconomic factors. In particular, if they get government benefits, it might be advantageous for them to stay single.

BTW I think Fnord raised some valid points as well.

Disclaimer: My education and training in this sphere applies only to the United States.

Sociologically speaking, marriage rates are falling because people (who are rational beings and respond to rewards/punishments) have fewer social/cultural/financial incentives to marry and stay married.

No-fault divorce laws profoundly changed the landscape of marriage in the US. It used to be difficult to marry and near-impossible to divorce, then it became easy to marry and difficult to divorce, and finally, it became very easy to marry and easy to divorce. Americans slowly transitioned from traditional monogamy (one spouse until death) to serial monogamy (one spouse at a time), and are now on track to not practice monogamy at all.

Easier access to divorce (and child support payments) results in a greater number of failed marriages. Shorter periods of courtship, premarital cohabitation, fewer children, having divorced parents themselves, marrying someone of a different religion, having severe educational differences, etc., all individually correlate (*correlation is not causation*) with an increase in divorce risk. When these factors are aggregated, successful marriage rates plummet.

Is it possible to have a successful marriage, despite having all of the above risk factors? Yes, on a micro/individual scale, it certainly is. But when we look at the macro-level data, it all points to an increase in marriage failure rates. When entire generations have witnessed astronomical marital failure, they are logically hesitant to marry. We most readily see that play out in the increase in premarital cohabitation (which, counterintuitively, social scientists have known for decades is correlated with divorce), as well as the delay of first marriages into the 30s and beyond.

All of this was established well before the advent of technology/the internet in courtship/dating (not to mention easier access to behaviors associated with marital infidelity). I suspect that single factor holds significant power in accelerating the decline of marriage, but this is pure speculation on my part; my formal studies largely concluded in the early 2000s.

The question is backwards in a sense.

Marriage used to be more common because there was more social, religious, and political pressures to get married and stay married. Less people are getting married because it's more socially acceptable.