Archiving Nuptiality Pandemic Data - Abstract Despite the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the varying state-level mitigation policies it triggered much remains unknown regarding the effects on a multitude of life domains, including the health and well-being of American families. There is a need for more dynamic and timely data to track how Americans are responding to the pandemic. Due to the deterioration and defunding of the marriage and divorce vital statistics system, recent monthly state-level marriage and divorce data are not available from one source in analysis-friendly formats crippling our capacity to understand geographic variation in marriage and divorce at an unprecedented time in world history. While the availability of some health and vital statistics data has become widespread throughout this crisis, high-quality data on the pandemic effects on marriage behavior have not been accessible, let alone kept pace. Existing survey data, such as that collected via the American Community Survey has been compromised due to low response rates and high nonresponse bias. Further, they do not provide monthly data. No centralized location or agency is responsible for providing monthly administrative data on marriage and divorce at the state level. Calls for attention on the effects of structural determinants (e.g., political, legal, policy, and economic) at the state-level have come from several constituent groups. Despite the spotlighted importance of state-level, timely data, and efforts of individual researchers to fill this gap, dynamic temporal, and spatial variation in how the pandemic has affected marriage and divorce patterns since March of 2020 remain unknown. Our objective is to continue our past efforts in archiving administrative marriages and divorce data and expand those efforts to archive monthly state-level marriage and divorce counts, compute monthly adjusted marriage and divorce rates at the state-level and disseminate these data in widely accessible manner enabling the usage by the broader research community, program staff, and practitioner communities. These efforts will enable researchers to link marriage and divorce data to existing data—a specifical designated purpose of this program announcement. Our third and final aim will be to disseminate the data via the National Center for Family & Marriage Research and the Data Sharing for Demographic Research websites. The dissemination will increase awareness of these valuable data across many potential data users. This innovative project fits squarely with the PDB mission to enhance knowledge and data availability on families and households. This, in turn, is expected to enhance currently available data and increase their potential scientific impact through increased accessibility and efficiency. The application is consistent with the purpose of the R03 mechanism and this specific program announcement and will offer a resource to a multidisciplinary set of researchers, policy makers, and practitioners.
