The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families
Americans today are less likely to be married than at any time in the nation’s history. Rates have declined for all groups, but they have fallen most sharply among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. A new survey finds that these less-advantaged adults are more likely than others to say that economic security is an important reason to marry. Even as marriage shrinks, family remains the most important and most satisfying element in the lives of most Americans.
Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents
One child in 10 in the U.S. lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession. About 40% of all children who live with a grandparent (or grandparents) are also being raised primarily by that grandparent.
Unauthorized Immigrants and Their U.S.-Born Children
Unauthorized immigrants comprise about 4% of the adult population, but their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8%) and the overall child population (7% of those younger than age 18) in this country.
The Typical Modern Mother: There Isn’t One
Today’s mothers of newborns are more likely than their counterparts two decades earlier to be ages 35 and older, to have some college education, to be unmarried or to be nonwhite — but not all at once.
The Return of the Multi-Generational Family Household
The multi-generational American family household is staging a comeback — driven in part by the job losses and home foreclosures of recent years, but more so by demographic changes that have been gathering steam for decades. As of 2008, a record 49 million Americans, or 16.1% of the total U.S. population, lived in such a household, up from 28 million, or 12.l%, in 1980. Such households had been more common a century ago, but began to fall out of favor after World War II. Now they are coming back.
