---
title: "CDC: Two of every five U.S. households have only wireless phones"
description: "Two of every five U.S. households have no landline phones, but the growth rate of cord-cutting slowed last year."
date: "2014-07-08"
authors:
  - name: "Drew DeSilver"
    job_title: "Senior Writer/Editor"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/drew-desilver/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/08/two-of-every-five-u-s-households-have-only-wireless-phones/"
categories:
  - "Mobile"
---

# CDC: Two of every five U.S. households have only wireless phones

[![wirelessOnly](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2014/07/wirelessOnly1.png)](https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/07/wirelessOnly1.png)

More Americans than ever have cut the (telephone) cord, but the growth rate of wireless-only households slowed last year.

About two-in-five (41%) of U.S. households had only wireless phones in the second half of 2013, according to a report released today by the [National Center for Health Statistics](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/wireless201407.pdf). The center, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated that 39.1% of adults and 47.1% of children lived in wireless-only households.

The share of wireless-only households was 2.8 percentage points higher than the same period in 2012. That's slower than in previous years. In 2010, the wireless-only share grew by 5.2 percentage points; 4.3 percentage points in 2011; and 4.2 percentage points in 2012.

As one might expect, young adults are the most likely to be living the wireless-only lifestyle. Nearly two-thirds (65.7%) of 25- to 29-year-olds, 59.7% of 30- to 34-year-olds, and 53% of 18- to 24-year-olds live in wireless-only households, according to the center. However, those percentages are little changed -- and in some cases even below -- those recorded in the first half of 2013.

However, as more people in older age brackets go wireless-only, the stereotype of cord-cutters as footloose Millennials is becoming less accurate. In the second half of 2010, more than half (52.5%) of people in wireless-only households were aged 18-34; in the most recent report, only 45.5% were.

A majority (56.2%) of poor households have no landline service, the only economic group for which that's true. Hispanics were the racial/ethnic group that was most likely to be wireless-only -- 53.1% lived in households with no landline phone.

People in the Northeast were considerably less likely than residents of other regions to be wireless-only. Just a quarter (24.9%) of Northeasterners reported living in households with no landline phone, versus more than 40% in the Midwest, West and South. An analysis last year of first-half 2013 data found that Idaho had the [highest percentage of wireless-only households](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/12/23/for-most-wireless-only-households-look-south-and-west/) -- 52.3% -- while New Jersey had the lowest at 19.4%.