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FYF Married couples now
outnumbered, census shows. NYT, October 15, 2006 The American
Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7%, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million
households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children
— just shy of a majority and down from more than 52% five years earlier. The numbers by no
means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been
reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most
Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending
more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential
social and economic implications are profound. “It just changes the
social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and
rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of
public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research
group. “It certainly challenges the way we set up
our work policies.” …With more
competition from other ways of living, the proportion of married couples has
been shrinking for decades. In 1930, they accounted for about 84% of
households. By 1990 the proportion of married couples had declined to about 56%. Married couples have not been a majority of households headed by adults
younger than 25 since the 1970’s, but among those aged 25 to 34 the proportion
slipped below 50% for the first time within the past five years. (Among
Americans aged 35 to 64, married couples still make up a majority of all
households.) “It’s partially
fueled by women in the work force; they don’t necessarily have to marry to be
economically secure,”
said Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College of the City
University of New York, who conducted the census analysis for The New York
Times. “You
used to get married to have sex. Now one of the major reasons to get married is
to have children, and the attractiveness of having children has declined for
many people because of the cost.” William H. Frey, a
demographer at the Brookings Institution, attributed the accelerated trend to
the lifestyles of baby boomers. “It’s the legacy of the boomers that have
finally caused this tipping point,” Dr. Frey said. “Certainly later generations
have followed in boomer footsteps, with high levels of living together before
marriage, and more flexible lifestyles. But the boomers were the trailblazers,
once again, rebelling against a norm their parents epitomized. “This would seem to close the book on
the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century,” he
said. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html |
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