82% meet future spouse by age 16

[snopes]

Comment: read this on twitter, and it seems
unlikely:

There's an 82% chance that if you're 16 or older, you've already met the
person you'll marry.

Is this true?

[chillas]

The "or older" part gives a pretty wide range to work with.

[Tootsie Plunkette]

So, in other words, if you're 16 or older, there's an 82% chance you'll marry someone someday?

[musicgeek]

I think that it's trying to say that 82% of people have met their future spouse by age 16.

That seems incredibly unlikely to me, given how many pairings occur at college or later. I know a few married couples who knew each other since childhood/high school, but they are vastly outnumbered by those I know who met at college or once they'd joined the workforce.

[Beachlife!]

I met the woman I married at 21. The chances of me marrying someone I knew at 16 at this point are about 0.

Either that 82% if qualified or based on very old data. I just don't think enough people stay in the same place long enough for that to be true.

[Cervus]

I could only see it being true for those small towns where you marry someone you went to high school with simply because there's no one else and people don't leave the area.

[Morrigan]

I grew up in a small town and eventually married my crush (who was also my older brother's best friend) after being 'separated' for nearly 15 years.

[jimmy101_again]

Originally Posted by musicgeek

That seems incredibly unlikely to me, given how many pairings occur at college or later. I know a few married couples who knew each other since childhood/high school, but they are vastly outnumbered by those I know who met at college or once they'd joined the workforce.

Though you have to remember that only a portion of the population goes to college at all. IIRC 45-50% USians have some college (~30% have degrees). For roughly 50% of the population they (1) didn't go to college at all and (2) probably live within 50 miles of where they were born. I believe those are the major factors underlying that statistic (which I've seen before but don't know how true it is.)

[Beachlife!]

The statistic would still require that virtually everyone who didn't go off to college married someone they grew up with, plus 2/3rds of those who did go to college would end up with someone they knew from home.

[ULTRAGOTHA]

That would be 4 of every 5 people meeting their spouse by age 16.

None of my family qualify. My siblings and I all met our spouses after graduating from University. My parents met while in University. (But not at University. My aunt parked my Dad on Mom while she checked out some other guy and when she came back it was too late!)

My stepdaughter met her husband after University.

The only pairing I can think of from my high school days are still married but they met when they were 18.

I mean I have a cadre of friends from Jr High and High School. We all still keep in sort-of touch. But only that one couple actually married anyone they met before University.



ETA: Maybe the OP is correct. 82% did meet their spouses at age 16 or older and the other 18% are either never married or met when less than 16 years old.

[Jahungo]

Another sighting of a similar idea. This one says "By the age of 16, 80% of people have met who they are going to marry."

I would be shocked if this was true in the US, but what about in different places, or even worldwide? I don't really have any idea, but I would be less shocked if it was true worldwide, given that the US probably has higher rates of moving large distances and the like than the global average.

[Hero_Mike]

Originally Posted by Cervus

I could only see it being true for those small towns where you marry someone you went to high school with simply because there's no one else and people don't leave the area.

Originally Posted by Morrigan

I grew up in a small town and eventually married my crush (who was also my older brother's best friend) after being 'separated' for nearly 15 years.

I recall an "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" quoting that a very large percentage - like 50% - of people living in the US, live only 50 miles away from where they were born. Now that is nearly unheard of here in Arizona, but I've been to smaller towns - mining towns - in Texas, Louisiana, New York, Ohio, Washington, Nevada, Kansas, and West Virginia - and that was generally true of the people I met there. By and large, these people that I met were men, and the vast majority of them had, at some point, left town to go to school or to serve in the military. (It seemed like no coincidence, either, that the further inland and land-locked their home town was, that the more likely they were to have served in the navy.) But they also came back to their hometown and settled there.

[Tootsie Plunkette]

Maybe they got it backwards. If you are still single by the time you reach the age of 82, you have a 16% chance of meeting someone who will marry you.

[jw]

'twould seem unlikely, unless you were from a small town and settled there.

Even though my wife grew up less than a mile away from me, I didn't meet her till I was 22. None of my 6 sibs met there partners before they were 16.
I would think for people growing up in cities, that opposite percentages to those in the OP, would be more likely.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

My parents, my sister, my brother and my maternal grandparents are all part of the 18%, then--and probably my paternal grandparents as well. I don't know when my grandmother met my grandfather, her second husband. However, she was married for the first time at 17, so I doubt she met Alvin until she was more than 16.

Seaboe

[Cobalt Indigo]

I met my husband my freshman year of high school at 15, and my uncle grew up with his wife whom he married after high school. But in my high school very few of us actually married our high school "sweethearts," if Facebook is anything to go by.