Record number of people in US living alone

Businesses taking notice

Matt Dietrichson, Jan 27, 12.

A record number of people in the US now live by themselves, and they spend $1.9 trillion a year, according to CNN Money:

In 1957, University of Michigan psychology professors Joseph Veroff, Elizabeth Douvan, and Richard Kulka released a survey that examined American attitudes to being single. The findings were stark: 80% of those surveyed believed that people who preferred being unmarried were “sick,” “immoral,” or “neurotic.” At a time when more than 70% of adults were married, it’s not surprising that people would express a preference for wedded life. But the scorn certainly sounds jarring to contemporary ears.
Oh, how things have changed. Americans are now within mere percentage points of being a majority single nation: Only 51% of adults today are married, according to census data. And 28% of all households now consist of just one person—the highest level in U.S. history. That second statistic may appear less dramatic than the first, but it’s actually changing much faster: The percentage of Americans living by themselves has doubled since 1960.
The extraordinary rise of living alone is among the greatest social changes since the baby boom. Until recently, no culture in human history had sustained large numbers of people in places of their own. Today more than 40% of households have just one occupant in cities such as Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, St. Louis, and Seattle. In Manhattan, nearly 50% of households consist of a single occupant, a number that seems impossibly high until you discover that the rate is similar in London and Paris, and even higher—a staggering 60%—in Stockholm.
Conventional wisdom is that singletons, the term I’ll use for those who live alone, tend to be lonely and isolated, perhaps even social failures. Big-idea books such as Bowling Alone and The Lonely American have portrayed the U.S. as a disconnected society full of loners. A steady stream of TV pundits and marriage advocates warn that being uncoupled jeopardizes our wealth, well-being, and longevity.
But after conducting more than 300 interviews and reviewing mountains of economic, sociological, and historical evidence, I’ve concluded that the conventional wisdom has it wrong. In fact, most people who live alone do it by choice. Many will pair up with a romantic partner eventually, but given that relationships often don’t last a lifetime, singletons are reluctant to settle. The proof is what comes out of their pocketbooks, since they willingly pay a premium for the privilege of living alone.

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