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A Nation of Singles – Implications For the Future

Next: How Did We Become a Nation of Singles?

Overview  

  1. US Birth Rate Falls to Record Low in 2011
  2. Birth Rate Needed to Maintain Current Population
  3. A Nation of Singles – Implications For the Future
  4. How Did We Become a Nation of Singles?
  5. Conclusions – How Do We Turn the Trend Around?

A Nation of Singles – Implications For the Future

What follows is a summary of a post-election demographic study that was sponsored by the Weekly Standard.

Americans have been wedded to marriage for a very long time. Between 1910 and 1970, the “ever-married rate” – that is, the percentage of people who marry at some point in their lives – went as high as 98.3% and never dipped below 92.8%. But beginning in 1970, the ever-married number began a gradual decline so that by 2000 it stood at only 88.6%.

Today, the numbers are even more striking according to the 2010 Census. Almost 24% of men, and 19% of women, between the ages of 35 and 44, have never been married. If we look at the people between 20 and 34 – the prime-childbearing years – the numbers are even more startling: 67% of men and 57% of women in this group have never been married. When you total it all up, over half of the voting-age population in America, and 40% of the people who actually showed up to vote this time around, are single.

You don’t hear nearly as much about the rise of single voters, despite the fact that they represent a much more significant trend. Only a few political analysts have emphasized how important “singletons” were to President Obama’s reelection. Properly understood, there is far less of a “gender gap” in American politics than people think. Yes, President Obama won “women” by 11 points (55 to 44 percent). But Mitt Romney won married women by the exact same margin.

To get a sense of how powerful the marriage effect is, not just for women but for men, too, look at the exit polls by marital status. Among non-married voters – people who are single and have never married, are living with a partner, or are divorced – Obama beat Romney 62-35. Among married voters Romney won the vote handily, 56-42.

Far more significant than the gender gap is the “marriage gap.” And what was made clear in the recent election was that the ranks of unmarried women and men are now at historic highs, and are still increasing. This marriage gap and its implications for our political, economic, and cultural future âis not well understood.

What does this group look like? Geographically, they tend to live in cities. As urban density increases, marriage rates (and childbearing rates) fall in nearly a straight line. Politicos James Carville and Stanley Greenberg put together some very interesting data on singles. Of the 111 million single eligible voters, 53 million are women and 58 million are men. Only 5.7 million of these women are Hispanic and 9.7 million are African American. Nearly three-quarters of all single women are white.

Singles broke decisively for Obama, no surprise there. Though his margins with them were lower than they were in 2008, he still won them handily: Obama was +16 among single men and +36 with single women. But the real news wasn’t how singles broke – it was that their share of the total vote increased by a whopping 6 percentage points.

That 6 percentage point increase meant 7.6 million more single voters than in 2008. They provided Obama with a margin of 2.9 million votes, about two-thirds of his margin of victory. To put this in some perspective, the wave of Hispanic voters we’ve heard so much about increased its share of the total vote from 2008 to 2012 by only a single point to roughly 12.5 million voters. It makes you wonder how the Romney handlers missed that!

Next: How Did We Become a Nation of Singles?