On November 29, the Census Bureau released its estimates of America’s family and living arrangements for the year 2021. Results showed a continuation of trends ongoing for decades. The number and percentage of unmarried Americans has grown, as has the number and percentage of people living alone. The age at which people first marry, among those who do marry, has remained high, too, and has increased for women.
The Rise of Unmarried Americans and People Living Alone
122 Million American Adults Are Not Married, and Most Never Have Been Married
The Census Report indicated that in 2021, there are now 122 million Americans who are divorced or widowed or have always been single. Previously, I charted the number of unmarried Americans from 1970 through 2019. In 1970, there were 38 million unmarried Americans, accounting for 28 percent of people 18 and older. By 2019, the number increased to 118 million, amounting to 47 percent. With the new number of 122 million unmarried Americans in 2021, the percentage is inching ever closer to half, at 48.2 percent. (Other reports suggest higher percentages of unmarried Americans if they count people starting at age 15 rather than 18.)
In 2019, adults who had always been single made up 62 percent of all unmarried Americans. In 2021, lifelong single people (called “never married” by the Census Bureau) comprise 63 percent. In 2019, 26 percent of unmarried Americans were divorced or separated, and 13 percent were widowed; in 2021, those percentages were 25 and 12.
Half of American Men Who Marry for the First Time Are Older Than 30
In my previous review, I included a graph of the age at which men and women first marry, among those who do marry, for the years 1890 through 2020. In 2020, that age, for men, exceeded 30. That means that of all American men who marry for the first time, half of them are older than 30. As I noted in the previous article, that age is even older in other places around the world.
The new numbers for 2021 do not show an increase from the year before in the age of first marriage for men. In 2020, that age was 30.5 and in 2021, 30.4 (though the numbers are revised occasionally when new data become available). For women, there was a clear increase, from 28.1 years old in 2020 to 28.6 in 2021. (If you want to check the current numbers, they are at the Census Bureau, Table MS-2: Estimated Mean Age at First Marriage: 1890 to present.)
The trend of people marrying later, if they marry at all, is just one of the reasons that the number of unmarried Americans continues to increase, year after year, decade after decade.
Even More People Are Living Alone: 37 Million Americans
Just last year (2020), 36.2 million Americans, 18 and older, were living alone, accounting for 28.1 percent of all households. Now, less than a year later, 37 million Americans are living alone, comprising 28.5 percent of all households.
As you can see in the graph from the previous article, the current numbers represent a huge increase from 1960, when fewer than 7 million Americans were living alone and 1-person households accounted for just 13 percent of all households.
Why Our Numbers Are Growing: It Is Not Because Society Is So Kind to Us
In “The escalating costs of being single in America,” published at Vox, Anne Helen Petersen reviews the conditions that can make single life so difficult, especially economically. She also underscores how hostile the U.S. is to single people. It is a valuable article, getting a lot of attention.
One of the most important points Petersen makes is about what we should make of the growing numbers of unmarried Americans. As members of Unmarried Equality know all too well:
“These numbers aren’t increasing because society has shifted to accommodate the single or solo-living. Quite the contrary; they are increasing even though the United States is still organized, in pretty much every way, to accommodate and facilitate the lives of partnered and cohabiting people, particularly married people.”
An Aside: Some Relevant Work Not Included in the Vox Article
I’ve been getting many messages about the Vox article, including comments and questions about the relevant work that was not included, so here are a few examples:
- The hidden costs of living alone
- 21 ways singles are taxed more, and not just financially
- What needs to change now that so many people live alone
- Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After Some of these books.
- Married men paid more than single men, get more interviews
Petersen does, though, cite other relevant work, including the important Atlantic article by Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell, The high price of being single in America. She was not writing an academic review article, so she had no obligation to include all or even most of the relevant work that preceded hers. I think she wrote a good article, bringing some much-needed attention to important issues, so I am grateful to her for that.
When Americans Are Asked What They Find Meaningful or Fulfilling, They Do Not Mention Romantic Partners Very Often
The over-the-top celebration of marriage, weddings, and coupling that I call matrimania is relentless. I think of it as a sort of mental blanketing, that tries to cover up every way of thinking that might value and honor people who are not coupled.
And yet, a just-published Pew report described quite an interesting finding. When Americans were asked, earlier this year (2021), “What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling, or satisfying?”, only 9 percent mentioned a spouse, romantic partner, marriage, dating, or romantic love. That was down from 20 percent just a few years ago (2017).
The Pew researchers, in 2021, also posed a similar question to representative samples of adults from 16 other places: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. In every one of those places, the percentage of people who mentioned romantic partners or romantic themes was lower than it was in the U.S.
The most popular category in the U.S. and many of the other places was family. That included mentions of immediate or extended family, children or grandchildren, or any other family-related topic. That is different from the topic of romantic partners, since family includes so many other people who are not romantic partners. Many single people who have no romantic partners might still say that they find meaning in family. People who do not have a spouse still have family. Family was not included among the topics that changed in importance from 2017 to 2021. The percentage of people finding meaning and fulfillment in romantic partners dropped a lot; apparently, the relevance of family did not change much.
One topic that did increase in importance for Americans was freedom and independence, something quite important to many single people. Friends and community, also valued by many single people, were mentioned more than twice as often as romantic partners as sources of meaning and fulfillment by all of the people in the surveys averaged together, not just the single people.
Quick Summary and a Hint about What May Be Happening
The most recent reports show that number of single people is continuing to increase, as it has been for decades. At the same time, the stereotyping, stigmatizing, and discrimination against single people (singlism) has continued as well, as has the glorifying of couples and romantic coupling (matrimania). But at some level, maybe people just aren’t buying all this mythology anymore about the wonder of couples. Romantic partners just don’t come to mind very often when people are asked what they find meaningful, fulfilling, or satisfying in their lives.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
