• Same-sex married couples are less likely than opposite-sex married couples to have spouses who are the same age and the same race and Hispanic origin, according to the 2021 one-year American Community Survey. In contrast, same-sex spouses were more likely than opposite-sex spouses to have similar income and education levels.
On average, married couples share more characteristics — such as race and ethnicity, income and age — than expected by chance. Known as homogamy, it’s the concept that people tend to marry those with characteristics similar to their own.
• Coupled households are still the most common type of households but their share declined to 53.2% in 2020, down from 55.1% in 2010 and 56.9% in 2000.
Coupled households are when the householder has a spouse or partner living with them. The majority of these households were opposite-sex married (45.7%) couples, followed by opposite-sex unmarried (6.5%), same-sex married (0.5%) and same-sex unmarried (0.4%).
In Oklahoma in 2020, opposite-sex married couples accounted for 46.4% of coupled households, while same-sex couples constituted 0.4%. In households of unmarried partners, opposite-sex partners constituted 6.2% and same-sex unmarried partners constituted 0.3%.
• More than 1-in-5 (21.2%) opposite-sex U.S. couples who lived together in 2021 had at least one partner who had children with multiple partners, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.
Having biological children with more than one partner, defined as multiple partner fertility (MFP), was common in many relationships, according to the Survey of Income and Program Participation.
Of the 69.1 million opposite-sex U.S. couples who lived together in 2021, 12.6 million (18.2%) had one partner with MPF; in approximately 2.1 million (3.0%) opposite-sex couples, both had children from multiple partners.
• Both the marriage and divorce rates of U.S. women age 15 and older declined from 2011 to 2021.
In 2021 the U.S. marriage rate was 14.9 marriages in the last year per 1,000 women, down from 16.3 a decade earlier. And the 2021 divorce rate dropped to 6.9 in the last year from 9.7 divorces per 1,000 women in 2011.
But the rates varied by state during both time periods.
The marriage rate in Oklahoma in 2021 was 19.6 per 1,000 women, higher than the national rate. The divorce rate in Oklahoma in 2021 was 9.3, also higher than the national rate.
Alaska and Utah had among the highest marriage rates, at 23.5 and 22.3, respectively. New Hampshire had a divorce rate of 4.3, among the lowest in the nation.
• Want to find a place to rent quickly? Move to the South or Midwest, regions that have the highest rental vacancies in the nation.
That could be because those regions have the highest U.S. homeownership rates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That agency’s housing vacancies and home ownership data, which provide current information on rental and homeowner vacancy rates and characteristics of units available for occupancy by region. Public and private sector organizations use these economic indicators to evaluate the need for new housing programs and initiatives.
• Over the past decade, the U.S. has faced multiple long-term public health emergencies – including the opioid crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic – that increased demand for mental health services.
Tracking spending on mental health services is important because of the significant proportion of the U.S. populace who have, or are at risk of having, mental health disorders.
According to the Census Bureau’s Service Annual Survey, estimated revenue of offices of mental health practitioners (except physicians) increased 104% from $7.9 billion in 2015 to $16.2 billion in 2021, topping revenues of both public and private psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals.
• The nation’s median age increased by 0.2 years to 38.9 years between 2021 and 2022, according to Vintage 2022 Population Estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Median age is the age at which half of the population is older and half of the population is younger.
“As the nation’s median age creeps closer to 40, you can really see how the aging of baby boomers, and now their children — sometimes called echo boomers — is impacting the median age. The eldest of the echo boomers have started to reach or exceed the nation’s median age of 38.9,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division.
“While natural change nationally has been positive, as there have been more births than deaths, birth rates have gradually declined over the past two decades. Without a rapidly growing young population, the U.S. median age will likely continue its slow but steady rise.”
A third (17) of the states had a median age above 40.0 in 2022, led by Maine with the highest at 44.8, and New Hampshire at 43.3.
Utah (31.9), the District of Columbia (34.8), and Texas (35.5) had the lowest median ages in the nation. Hawaii had the largest increase in median age among states, up 0.4 years to 40.7.
• The U.S. population age 65 and over grew nearly five times faster than the total population during the 100 years from 1920 to 2020, according to the 2020 Census.
The older population reached 55.8 million or 16.8% of the U.S. population in 2020.
The older population increased by 50.9 million, from 4.9 million (or 4.7% of the total U.S. population) in 1920 to 55.8 million (16.8%) in 2020. This represented a growth rate of about 1,000%, almost five times that of the total population (about 200%). In 2020, approximately 1-in-6 people in the U.S. were age 65 and older. In 1920, this proportion was less than 1-in-20.
The rapid growth was largely driven by aging baby boomers (born after World War II, between 1946 and 1964) who began turning 65 in 2011.
• Multigenerational households – three or more generations under one roof – constituted 4.7% of all U.S. households but 7.2% of family households in 2020, an increase from 2010.
Family households are those with at least one person related to the householder by birth, marriage or adoption.
There were 6.0 million U.S. multigenerational households in 2020, up from 5.1 million in 2010, according to 2020 Census data.
• In 2020, 6.1 million (8.4%) of children under age 18 lived in their grandparents’ home, up from 5.8 million in 2010.
Counties in Puerto Rico and throughout states in the South and West tended to have a greater share of children living in their grandparents’ home, while counties in the Midwest – particularly in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin – had a smaller share.
The five counties with the greatest shares of children living with their grandparents were predominantly in the West (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Hawaii), and those with the smallest shares were all in the Midwest (Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota and South Dakota).