“National Singles Week” was started by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed during Sept. 19-25 as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed.

Singleness
95.7 million
Number of unmarried and single Americans. This group comprises 43 percent of all U.S. residents age 15 and over. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=100621288252>

54%
Percentage of unmarried and single Americans who are women. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=100621288252>

63%
Percentage of unmarried and single Americans who have never been married. Another 23 percent are divorced, and 14 percent are widowed. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=100621288252>

14.5 million
Number of unmarried and single Americans age 65 and over. These older Americans comprise 15 percent of all unmarried and single people. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=101211465067>

50%
Percentage of adults in New York who are unmarried, the highest rate of any state. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001489.html>

27%
Percentage of formerly married people (widowed, separated or divorced) in Gary, Ind.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Hollywood, Fla. These cities are among cities of 100,000 or more residents with the highest rates of formerly married people.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001489.html>

86
Number of unmarried men age 15 and over for every 100 unmarried women in the United States. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001489.html>

114
Number of unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women in Alaska, the highest ratio of men to women among all states. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001489.html>

118
Number of unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women in Paradise, Nev., an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. This is one of the highest ratios of any place with 100,000 or more people. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Tempe, Ariz.; and Sunnyvale and Santa Ana, Calif., follow.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001489.html>

52.6 million
Number of households maintained by unmarried men and women. These households comprise
48 percent of households nationwide. <http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-1.pdf>

28.8 million
Number of people who live alone. These one-person households comprise 26 percent of all U.S. households. <http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabHH-4.pdf>

Parenting
33%
Percentage of births in 2002 to unmarried women. The rate varies from 89 percent for unmarried teenagers ages 15 to 19 to 12 percent for unmarried women ages 30 to 44.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html>

12.2 million
Number of single parents: 10 million single mothers and 2.2 million single fathers. <http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabFM-2.pdf>

43%
Percentage of opposite-sex, unmarried partner households that include children.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/000814.html>

683,000
Number of unmarried grandparents who are responsible for caring for their grandchildren. These grandparents comprise nearly 1-in-3 unmarried grandparents. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_lang=en&_ts=101211465067>

Unmarried Couples
5.5 million
Number of unmarried-partner households in 2000. These households consist of 4.9 million opposite-sex partners and about 600,000 partners of the same sex. This is up from 3.2 million in 1990.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/000814.html>

39 years old and 37 years old
Average ages of unmarried male and female partners, respectively, in Florida — oldest of any state. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/000814.html>

8.1%
Percentage of households in Paterson, N.J., that are opposite-sex, unmarried-partner households. Paterson; Manchester, N.H.; and Rochester, N.Y., had the highest rates of this type of household in the country among cities with 100,000 or more people. Cities with the highest percentage of same-sex, unmarried partner households are San Francisco (2.7 percent), Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (2.1 percent); and Seattle, Wash. (1.9 percent). <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/000814.html>

Voters
34%
Percentage of voters in the 2000 presidential election who were unmarried. Those who were widowed (59 percent), divorced (54 percent) and never-married (44 percent) voted at lower rates than married people (67 percent). <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/voting/000505.html>

Education
85%
Percentage of never-married people age 25 and over who are high-school graduates; this relatively high level of high school completion reflects this group’s relatively young age. Conversely, the low level of high-school completions (67 percent) among widowed people is in part attributable to this group’s older age. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/education/001863.html>