With the marriage rate in America still hovering near an all-time low reached in 2019, despite polls consistently showing that the desire for marriage remains strong for young adults, a new study has highlighted the areas of the U.S. that have the most single young adults and which areas are producing the most marriages.

The report, published by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) last week, found that the largest share of unmarried young adults in their 20s and 30s are in urban centers like Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. However, “The areas with the most new marriages are almost entirely in middle America,” the researchers found. These areas included Provo, Utah; Fort Wayne and Evansville, Indiana; and Colorado Springs, Colorado as well as west/central Tennessee, northwest Georgia, and North Carolina’s Greenville/Jacksonville corridor.

The analysis further found that areas with the highest ratios of young men with stable full-time employment to single women tended to have the highest marriage rates. IFS noted that North Dakota and the San Jose, California area had the highest ratios, with “marriage rates in the upper 20%.”

IFS Senior Fellow and Director of Research Wendy Wang, who authored the report along with IFS Research Fellow Ken Burchfiel and IFS Senior Fellow and University of Virginia Professor Brad Wilcox, noted that a full-time job “is the strongest factor that is related to the marriage rate,” as she observed during “Washington Watch” Monday. “Where the most singles are actually is not where the marriages are happening.”

Another key factor in marriage that the data analysis uncovered is religious affiliation. As previous studies have shown, those who are active religious practitioners have the highest rates of marriage, and the new IFS report only confirms this.

“[I]f you look at where the share of the married young adults [is] highest, the top area is Utah County, Utah, where we know there’s a lot of Mormons,” Wang pointed out. “[A]nother area that’s in Lakewood, New Jersey [is] where you find the largest [concentration of] Orthodox Jews. … [I]n general, from our study, we find that people who are religious are more likely to be married and more likely to have children, so the data at the geographic level match that story as well.”

As religious affiliation and practice have dwindled in the U.S., along with the rate of fully-employed young men, so too has the rate of marriage. This is arguably a significant factor in why Americans are unhappier than ever, since those who are married report being happier and thriving at far higher rates than those who are not.

This is especially tragic because, as numerous studies have found, the percentage of Americans who desire marriage is significantly higher than the percentage who are actually married. IFS is hoping that resources like their marriage map can help young adults fulfill their desire for matrimony.

“[W]e know that young adults today value jobs, value employment a lot. But our studies show that having a good job is actually not as important to happiness as being married,” Wang underscored. “So we encourage young adults — if you can relocate to a place to find a job and you can relocate to a place to find a spouse, because being married is the most important factor of being happy.”