Singles studies
Demographic information

Making Sense of Census Bureau Data: An Overview download a copy!

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How Many Single People Are There? [download a copy!]

To answer this question, look at population estimates, based on individuals, not households. The answer you get will vary, depending on factors such as the following:

  1. What year were the data collected? (The number of single people has been increasing over the years.)
  2. At what age do you want to start counting single people? Many Census Bureau tables start counting at age 15. If you want to start at a later age, say 18, look carefully at the tables. You may need to use a table that shows the number of singles at each age; then, if the totals include 15-17 year olds, subtract them.
  3. Do you want to look separately at different subcategories of single people, such as divorced, widowed, and never married?
  4. Do you want to include separated people with those who are married or with those who are single?

The most straightforward answer to the question of how many single people there are can be found in special “Facts for Features” released every year by the Census Bureau in time for Unmarried and Single Americans Week, the third week of September. Here’s the link to the 2007 report:

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/010329.html

As you can see from the first line of that report, data from the most recent year (2006) showed that there were 92 million Americans 18 and older who were unmarried. They comprised 42% of all US residents 18 and older.

If you follow the link corresponding to the 92 million figure, you will end up on this page, a report that is mostly about single-parent households:

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/families_households/009842.html

On that page, click on “detailed tables” on the upper right side. That will take you to this page:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html

Click on the link under #1, 2006 March CPS, America’s Families and Living Arrangements, “Detailed Tables.” You will then end up here:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2006.html

Table A1 shows “Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 2006.” The first table provides data for All Races. Click on the Excel tab and the table will open in Excel.

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How Many People Are Living Alone? [download a copy!]

The Census Bureau data that answer this question are under Households, or “Families and Living Arrangements.” People living alone are called “one-member households,” or “householder living alone.”

For 2006 data, follow this link:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html

Then, under #1, 2006 March CPS, click on “detailed tables.” You will end up on a page with many tables, from Table A1 to Table UC3. Click on Table H1, “Households by Type, Tenure, and Race and Hispanic Origin of Householder: 2006.” If you click on Excel in the first row (All Races), the table will open in Excel.

The first number you see will tell you that there are 114,384,000 households. (The entries are in thousands, so the number you see is 114,384.) The next row indicates that there are 30,453,000 one-member households. Dividing the total number of households by the number of one-member households indicates that in 2006, 26.6% of households were comprised of one person living alone. That’s from the Current Population Survey (CPS).

Another estimate is provided by the American Community Survey. Click here to see their estimate from 2005.

Go down to the section, SELECTED HOUSEHOLDS BY TYPE. The second-last entry is “householder living alone.” This survey estimates that 27.1% of all American households are comprised of one person.

There is also an interesting graph that let’s you see at a glance how the distribution of households types has changed over time. The years that are graphed are 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2003. The household types are married with children, married without children, other family households, one-person households (broken down by women living alone and men living alone), and other nonfamily households. You can find the graph by following this link:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-553.pdf

and going to Figure 2, which is on p. 4.

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What is the Rate of Divorce? [download a copy!]

There are different ways to estimate the rate of divorce, and they produce different answers. Here are some of the ways:

Annual rate: Number of people out of 1000 who are divorced in a particular year, divided by the number of people out of 1000 who are married in that year. For the year 2003, there were 3.8 divorces per 1000 people, and 7.5 marriages for every 1000 people, so the rate of divorce was 3.8 / 7.5 or 50.7%. Because of problems with the measure, this is an overestimate.
What’s wrong with the annual rate measure?

  1. The people who are marrying and the people who are divorcing are not the same people. It does not answer the question, what is the likelihood that any given marriage will end in divorce?
  2. Any estimate based on a particular year can be influenced by events that are specific to that year. For example, in 1946, there was an unusually high number of divorces, because when World War II ended, many wartime marriages dissolved. The pattern of divorces would have been different without this unusual event.

Of those who have married, what percent subsequently get divorced?
If you look at the cohort of people born in a particular year, you can figure out their lifetime probability that their marriages will end in divorce.

For an accessible discussion, without a lot of statistical complexities, see:

Hurley, Dan. (2005, April 19). Divorce rate: It’s not as high as you think. New York Times.
Click here to view the Article

For a more up-to-date report, with a more detailed description of statistical issues, see the following article. It includes a table showing estimates of divorce rates from the years 1910 to 2000, and compares the results from different measures.

Schoen, Robert, & Vladimir Canudas-Romo. (2006). Timing effects on divorce: 20th century experience in the United States. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 749-758.
Click here to view the Article

Here is the concluding sentence of the abstract of their paper (on p. 749): “Adjusted values for recent years do not suggest a decline in the likelihood of divorce, with year 2000 values indicating a divorce probability of 0.43 – 0.46.”

The summary table, Table 2, is on p. 755. This table probably provides a better and more comprehensive set of estimates of the divorce rate than any one table currently available from the Census Bureau.

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When Do People First Marry (If They Marry)? [download a copy!]

In Census Bureau terms, this is the “median age at first marriage.”  The Census Bureau provides historical data for men and women separately, from 1890 through 2006. To find it, first follow this link:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html

Scroll past the first 14 topics and past the section on Working Papers. Then you will come to the “Historical Time Series” section. Table MS-2 shows the “Estimated Median Age at First Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to the Present.”

You will see that Americans married youngest in 1956 (22.5 for men and 20.1 for women) and oldest for the most recent year for which data were available, 2006 (27.5 for men, 25.5 for women).

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