The Family - Households In The U.s.

The household is the most basic building block of society. Our living arrangements, and the ways in which we organize our households, tell us a great deal about society's organization, too. Household statistics over the last century reveal dramatic changes. Household sizes are down — and a new kind of household has emerged — recognized for the first time in 1940 by the U.S. Bureau of the Census: Non-Family Households¹. Even the definition of what "household" means has changed during the century.

The chart presents an overview of households from 1900 to 2000 by decade. The bars present the average number of individuals in a household. The lines present overall population, total number of households, and the number of family households. By inferences, the number of non-family households is the difference between the number of family households and the total number of households.

A family household consists of two or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. A non-family household can be a person living alone or an individual living with others to whom he or she is not related. In 1940, the first year in which this bifurcation in households was officially noted, non-family households accounted for 10% (3,458,000) of all households. Sixty years later, non-family households accounted for 31% (32,680,000) of households. Of these, 82% (26,724,000) were households made up of single individuals — nearly a quarter of all households in 2000! This fact alone accounts for much of the decline in the average number of persons per hearth.

A clear trend towards smaller households is apparent². What explains this trend? We saw in Chapter 1 that the fertility rate has been declining. We're not having as many children. We're also living longer. The elderly often live alone or with a spouse. Thus the number of single and two-person households is bolstered by our increasing life expectancy. We marry later; the divorce rate is up. Both of these factors mean that people live on their own longer. As women have entered the workforce in ever-greater numbers — and as their incomes have increased (although still shy of men's incomes on average) — women have been economically able to maintain households on their own.

There is also the matter of rising prosperity. In the early part of the century, households spent much more of income on the residence itself than they do today. We can afford the luxury of having our own places now. And many of us do.

In the next panels we look at the groups that form our family and non-family households and begin to try and answer the question: What's happening with the family?

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Current Population Reports. Series P20-537. "America's Families and Living Arrangements: March 2000."; Households by Type: 1940 to Present (an historical compilation table). Online. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-1.txt June 29, 2001; Historical Statistics of the United States — Colonial Times to 1970, page 15; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2001. 121^st ed. p. 14 and 15.