Record Share of Americans Have Never Married
One-in-five adults ages 25 and older have never married, up from 9% in 1960. Shifting public attitudes toward marriage, hard economic times and changing demographic patterns may have all played a role.
One-in-five adults ages 25 and older have never married, up from 9% in 1960. Shifting public attitudes toward marriage, hard economic times and changing demographic patterns may have all played a role.
A record 8% of households with minor children in the United States are headed by a single father, up from just over 1% in 1960, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Decennial Census and American Community Survey data. The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than […]
A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The share was just 11% in 1960.
This posting explores statistics about marriage rates, median age at first marriage and attitudes about marriage. Although the marriage rate is at a record low, most never-married Americans say they would like to marry. “Love” is cited more than other factors as a reason to get married, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
The number of Americans who recently wed has been declining for years, and 2011 was no exception, according to estimates from the American Community Survey. An estimated 4.2 million Americans were newlyweds in 2011, about the same as in 2010 and sharply lower than in 2008.
At the Population Association of America’s annual conference in San Francisco this week, papers on the recession’s impact on families, wealth, children, young adults, older Americans and other realms of life will be presented in at least 10 of the 200-plus sessions. Much of the research is preliminary, but it raises intriguing questions. One paper tries to assess whether the poor economy has affected divorce rates.
Chapter 1: Overview As the 2012 presidential candidates prepare their closing arguments to America’s middle class, they are courting a group that has endured a lost decade for economic well-being. Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith […]
The share of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased to 15.1% in 2010, more than double the share in 1980.
Barely half of all adults in the United States—a record low—are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides and grooms.
A growing number of organizations (including the Census Bureau) are producing census-based interactive maps that allow users to choose the level of geography, topic or time period they want to display. This All Things Census posting includes links to maps using data from the 2010 Census, as well as earlier census data.
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