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Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds
WASHINGTON — Married couples have dropped below half of all American households for the first time, the Census Bureau says, a milestone in the evolution of the American family toward less traditional forms.
Married couples represented just 48 percent of American households in 2010, according to data being made public Thursday and analyzed by the Brookings Institution. This was slightly less than in 2000, but far below the 78 percent of households occupied by married couples in 1950.
What is more, just a fifth of households were traditional families — married couples with children — down from about a quarter a decade ago, and from 43 percent in 1950, as the iconic image of the American family continues to break apart.
In recent history, the marriage rate among Americans was at its highest in the 1950s, when the institution defined gender roles, family life and a person’s place in society. But as women moved into the work force, cohabitation lost its taboo label, and as society grew more secular, marriage lost some of its central authority.
“The days of Ozzie and Harriet have faded into the past,” said William Frey, the senior demographer at Brookings who analyzed the data. (The proportion of married couples slipped below half over the past decade, but was first reported as a precise count by the 2010 census.)
Today, traditional patterns have been turned upside down. Women with college degrees are now more likely to marry than those with just high school diplomas, the reverse of several decades ago, said June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-author of “Red Families v. Blue Families.”
Rising income inequality has divided American society, making college-educated people less likely to marry those without college degrees. Members of that educated group have struck a new path: they marry later and stay married. In contrast, women with only a high school diploma are increasingly opting not to marry the fathers of their children, whose fortunes have declined along with the country’s economic opportunities.
“Employment instability depresses marriage rates,” Ms. Carbone said. Explaining the reasoning, she said, “I can support myself and the kid, but not myself, the kid, and him.”
W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, argues that the retreat from marriage is bad for society because it means less security for children. “It’s troubling because those kids are much more likely to be exposed to instability, complex family relations and poverty,” he said.
Married couples may be half of all households, but that does not mean that only half of Americans will ever be married. The overwhelming majority of Americans — with some exceptions — do eventually marry (though increasingly, working-class people do not stay married).
Households are changing in other ways. Americans are living longer than ever, so households now include a growing number of elderly singles, said Andrew J. Cherlin, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University. Other factors have been the large influx of immigrants, who tend to be single people in their 20s and 30s, and the growing number of young people who live together without being married.
There are 37 states, plus the District of Columbia, in which married couples make up fewer than 50 percent of all households, up from just 6 states in 2000, Mr. Frey said.
In all, 41 states showed declines in traditional households of married couples with children. In 2000, married couples with children were fewer than 20 percent of all households in just one state, plus the District of Columbia. Now they are fewer than a fifth in 31 states, Mr. Frey said.
The biggest change for the decade was the jump in households headed by women without husbands — up by 18 percent in the decade. The next largest rise was in households whose occupants were not a family — up by about 16 percent, Mr. Frey said.
