How big are we?
Today the Census Bureau sent a bunch of statistics to the media to help reporters write attention-getting articles about National Unmarried and Single Americans Week – the third full week of September (Sept. 19-25 in 2010).
To borrow a line from our friend Tom Coleman: much of the data in this press release is based on the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of only 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because this sample is so small, it is subject to much greater error than the American Community Survey. Until all the data has been gathered and processed from the 2010 Census, we’ll keep using the 2006 – 2008 American Community Survey three-year estimates as our best source of information. The ACS uses a much bigger sample size, and combining three years of data makes it even bigger and more reliable.
For example, the 2008 3-year ACS estimates that less than half – 49.566% – of all households in the U.S. are occupied by married couples (with or without children or other people).
I haven’t yet found an ACS data-point for marital status of householder, though it is possible to work backwards into it. The CPS does report the marital status of householders, finding 3,348,000 married individuals who maintain households without their spouses. Some might be separated, or long-distance commuters, or married to someone who is in the military or incarcerated or just plain missing.
We think about these numbers a lot, because it means a lot to people to be “in the majority.” Somehow, there’s validation in numbers: people instinctively conflate “majority” and “average” with “normal” and “okay.” Of course, AtMP is here to say that unmarried people are perfectly normal and okay no matter how the stats tick up or down over the years. And of course, we celebrate the solidly consistent trends showing the unmarried community’s growth and diversity.
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:08 am
I’m perplexed about why the number of HOUSEHOLDS that are married-occupied or not is so important. To me it is as irrelevant as, for example, how many car owners are married or not, or how many enjoy gardening as a hobby.
I’m vastly much more interested in adult PEOPLE than I am about HOUSEHOLDS. Per
America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2009
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2009.html
Percentage of adults age 18-and-over:
57.3% married, 42.7% unmarried
The main reason of course for why it is possible that married adult People are still very much in the majority while married Households are in the minority, is that the vast majority of married people live with their spouses, while tens of millions of unmarried people live alone.
I also worry that most people who read about unmarried Households being in the majority do not realize that this is not the same as the majority of People or the majority of adult People. Certainly I’ve seen a number of postings on the ATMP-TALK List saying things like “the unmarried are now in the majority” (without saying households), or “we’re in the majority”, and nobody (but me) tries to correct this mis-information.
So as not to perpetuate this confusion, I would hope that those who know these facts, and yet still find it somehow relevant to post about unmarried households being in the majority, would at least parenthetically include the information that it is also true that the majority of adult People are married.
Also much more relevant than the number of Households that are married or unmarried occupied is the number of VOTERS — sadly, that is even more skewed towards a married majority.
Jim Larson
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Well, if you think in terms of economic structure and you know history of the terms that are still used today, unchanged, you know that often it is ALL about a structure of economics, as marriage is.
It is a structure of economics so that a man’s name as well as his lifetime of work accumulates materials and descendants so that he can pass his wealth on down to his heirs, traditionally speaking. Women can now do it too, of course. But Im pointing out that Households meant Men and Men were the only ones that mattered for certain things concerning the govt…and that is why households matter and people are not counted. It never changed…although lots of things around it changed. I find this is true with many things. The language useage stays the same. It no longer fits the reality. I’ve written an essay on ethical marriage and how the language and stories used by that language do no’t fit because it’s outdated from another time. People and systems try to fit the language and the stories and it doesn’t work. We need language and system change to fit the actual reality…I agree with you, in other words.