Single adults now outnumber married adults

By David K. Li
September 9, 2014 | 10:37am

It’s official, we’ve become the United Singles of America!

Unmarried American adults outnumber their married counterparts for the first time since the federal government began tracking that data in 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There were 124.6 million single Americans in August, accounting for 50.2 percent of the 16-and-over US population, BLS data showed.

That number has been hovering just below the 50-percent mark since 2013, before finally getting over the majority hurdle this summer.

Back in 1976, the unmarried crowd accounted for 37.4 percent of the adult population and it’s been trending upward ever since.

Unmarried adults split about 3-to-2 in favor of those who have never walked down the aisle (30.4 percent) compared to divorcees, widows and widowers (19.8 percent). In 1976, those figures were closer at 22.1 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively.

Economist Edward Yardeni said the high rate of single-person households are exaggerating American’s income inequality gap.

“While they (single-income households) have less household earnings than married people, they also have fewer expenses, especially if there are no children in their households,” Yardeni wrote in his report “Selfies.”

http://nypost.com/2014/09/09/single-...arried-adults/