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We don’t seem to like or respect single people and their choices.
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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 cohabitating people, particularly married people. To be clear, these numbers aren’t increasing because society has shifted to accommodate the single or solo-living.
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Add in the sexual revolution, the feminist movement, the mass incarceration of Black men, the inability for same-sex couples to marry one another or, in some states, safely cohabitate until relatively recently, and declining rates of religious observance, and you have a whole slew of intersecting reasons people are single or solo-living at far greater rates than ever before. You can attribute some of these increases to no-fault divorce, which began to standardize in the 1970s the continued aging of boomers - who are growing old but not always together and college-educated people, in particular, delaying marriage until later in life. Given these and other trends - including the high cost of aging, the fact that women (and Black women in particular) make significantly less money over their lifetimes - it is women (and again, Black women in particular) who often bear the biggest financial load of single life. The reverse is true for women: They’re more likely to marry young but then end up divorced or widowed and living alone as they age. Men, as a general rule, are far more likely to be single when they’re young, marry later (or for a second time), and stay married until their deaths. Then there’s the age breakdown: Women live significantly longer - and, over their lifetimes, make less money. The 31 percent figure holds true for both men and women in the aggregate but varies significantly by race and sexual orientation: According to Pew’s most recent survey data, 47 percent of Black adults are single, compared to 28 percent of white adults and 27 percent of Hispanic adults 47 percent of adults who identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual are single, compared to 29 percent of straight adults. Overall, 31 percent of US adults identify today as single, defined as not married, living with a partner, or in a committed relationship. An additional 11 million households are headed by a single parent, a number that has tripled since 1965. 28 percent of US households have one person back in 1960, that was just 13 percent. There are so many routes to and reasons for arriving at the single or solo-living life, and more people are living it than ever before: As of 2021, 37 million Americans live alone - about 15 percent of adults. Some have lived alone, purposely or regretfully, their entire lives. Some are retired some are widowed or divorced some are in long-distance relationships that require two households. Single or solo-living people may or may not be partnered with someone in the long or short term, and they may or may not be parents, but they all live and bear the responsibility for their bills alone. When we talk about all the ways it’s become harder and harder for people to find solid financial footing in the middle class, we have to talk about how our society is still set up in a way that makes it much easier for single people to fall through the cracks.įirst, we need to define a clunky but essential term. For the more than 40 million people who live in this kind of single-income household, it’s also become increasingly untenable. All the expenses of existing in society, on one set of shoulders. If you live by yourself - or as a single parent or caregiver - you don’t have to imagine. Now imagine paying for all those things completely on your own. You pay for food, and household items like toilet paper and garbage bags and lightbulbs. If you take the subway, there’s a public transit pass. If you drive a car, there’s gas and insurance. Then there’s the smaller stuff: the utility bills the internet and phone bills Netflix, Hulu, and all your other streaming subscriptions. There are the big-ticket items - your rent or mortgage, your health care, maybe a student loan. Harry saves hermione from voldemort fanfiction.Think about your household’s monthly expenses.