We also see that the percentage of women on the ten largest reservations aged 15 and over who had never married was higher than that for the U.S. population. The numbers range from a low of approximately 31 percent on the Zuni reservation to a high of 52 percent on the Papago reservation. All of these figures are above the percentage for all women in the United States (23.4). The median ages of the Zuni (24.1) and Papago (24.2) reservations are relatively the same, but the poverty and unemployment rates are higher on the Papago than on the Zuni reservation. In addition, the sex ratio is slightly more favorable in the Zuni Pueblo than among the Papago (see Table 9-1).

Unfortunately, we do not know very much about the historical patterns of marriage on these specific reservations, so it is not clear whether these figures represent new or continuing patterns of delayed marriage and/or permanent single status. Also, we do not have the appropriate data to examine what accounts for the variation across segments of the national Indian population or differences among the ten largest reservations. We can speculate on some possibilities. First, the marriage market may differ significantly across the reservations in ways that are only partially reflected in the descriptive data on the median age, sex ratio, and economic situations of young men and women. Second, the differences