Single heads of households are growing while single parent heads of households are barely changed from 1994 to 2006, says the U.S. Census Bureau's latest report on Families and Living Arrangements from data collected in February, March and April of 2006.

Slightly more than one in four households (26 percent) consisted of a person living alone in 2006, up from 17 percent in 1970. But the population of singles is actually larger than the heads of household figure would suggest. According to 2006 study by the Census Bureau, singles actually make up 41 percent of the U.S. population, regardless of living arrangements.

One reason is that people are marrying later in life. In 2006, 33 percent of males and 26 percent of females 15 and older had never married, up from 28 and 22 percent in 1970.

The majority of men and women in 2006 had been married by the time they were 30 to 34 (71 percent), and among men and women 65 and older, 96 percent had been married.

The percentage of households headed by single parents is about nine percent, up from five percent in 1970. In 2006, there were 12.9 million one-parent families -- 10.4 million single-mother families and 2.5 million single-father families.

Just over two-thirds (67 percent) of the nation’s 73.7 million children younger than 18 lived with two married parents in 2006. Also in 2006, there were an estimated 5.8 million stay-at-home parents: 5.6 million mothers and 159,000 fathers.

About 5.7 million children, or 8 percent of the total, lived in a household that included a grandparent in 2006. The majority of these children (3.7 million) lived in the grandparent’s home, and of these, about 60 percent had a parent present.

Among the 13 million children 15 to 17, about 2.3 million were working, and of these, 2.2 million worked part time.

That means that over one-third of households are headed by singles or single parents, a growing trend which could impact the housing and communities are designed in the future.

Average household sizes continue to shrink. In 2006, the average household size in 2006 was 2.57 people, down from 3.14 in 1970.

Published: April 2, 2007

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