Item from the Smart
Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics
Collection
July 27, 1998
4 million unwed couples live together
by Barbara Vobejda The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - More than 4 million American households are made up of
unmarried couples, an
eightfold increase since 1970, the Census Bureau reports.
The figures reflect a broad social change: a practice that was rare and
widely rejected as immoral not long
ago has become common. Other research shows that half of women in their
early 30s have lived with a
man outside of marriage.
The Census Bureau also found in a report out today that a substantial
share of these unmarried couples -
nearly 36 percent - have children under age 15 living with them.
"It's a very great change from the '40s and '50s, when marriage and
sex
were pretty much equated," said
Reynolds Farley, a sociologist with the Russell Sage Foundation in New
York. "We've had a huge
change in how people think about marriage."
The much wider acceptance of unmarried couples sharing a home stems both
from changing values and
from a changing economy that makes it harder for young people to support
themselves without a college
education and causes them to delay marriage.
The Census Bureau reported that the median age at first marriage is 26.8
for men and 25 for women. In
1970, the median age was 23.2 for men and 20.8 for women.
As young people have postponed marriage to pursue college or find better
jobs, they have continued to
form relationships but have increasingly tended to move in together
without a marriage license.
In 1970, there was one unmarried couple for every 100 households of
married couples. Now, the figure
is eight for every 100 married couples, said Terry Lugaila, the Census
Bureau statistician who wrote the
new report, "Marital Status and Living Arrangements." The report
is based
on 1997 figures.
Other research, conducted by Larry Bumpass, a demographer at the
University of Wisconsin, found 38
percent of women ages 19-24 said they had lived with a man to whom they
were not married, and that
figure increased to 49 percent for women ages 30-34.
In 1970, the Census Bureau reported, there were 523,000 unmarried couples
living together. By the late
1970s, about one-fifth of these households included children younger than
15, a figure that has climbed
to 36 percent.
The numbers of unmarried households do not include gay couples.
Other Census Bureau findings:
Nearly 35 percent of Americans ages 25-34 have never been married. Among
African Americans, the
figure is 54 percent.
About one in 10 adults is currently divorced and not remarried, compared
to 3.2 percent in 1970.
Nearly half of women 65 and older are widowed, and 70 percent of these
widows live alone.
Close to 28 percent of children younger than 18 are living with one
parent. Most of those - 85 percent -
live with their mothers. Of those living with their mothers, 40 percent
have mothers who had never
married.
| Smart
Marriages Archive | New Divorce
Statistics and Studies Blog | Older Divorce
Statistics Collection Archive |