U.S. married couples drop to minority status in survey

U.S. married couples drop to minority status in survey
New York Times News Service
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published October 15, 2006

Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of U.S. households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.

The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, 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 percent five years earlier.

The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The 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 workforce, 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 non-profit research group. "It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies."

Unmarried couples decide to live together for different reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance.

The census survey estimated that 5.2 million couples, a little more than 5 percent of households, were unmarried opposite-sex partners. An additional 413,000 households were male couples and 363,000 were female couples. In all, nearly 1 in 10 couples were unmarried. (One in 20 households consisted of people living alone).