EMBARGOED UNTIL: 12:01 A.M. EST, JANUARY 7, 1999 (THURSDAY)
Public Information Office CB99-03
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e-mail: pio@census.gov
Terry Lugaila
301-457-2465
Married Adults Still in the Majority, Census Bureau Reports
About 56 percent of all American adults (111 million people) were
married and living with their spouses in 1998, according to a report
released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.
The report, Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1998 (Update), P20-514,;
provides demographic characteristics of people in different marital
statuses, as well as information on the living arrangements of children
and adults.
Other highlights of the report:
- About 10 percent of adults (19.4 million) were "currently divorced" in
1998.
- Among those between 25 and 34 years old, about 35 percent (14 million)
had never been married. Of African Americans in this age group, 53
percent had never been married.
- Nearly half (45 percent) of women 65 years old and over were widowed.
Of the elderly widows, 7 in 10 lived alone.
- About 28 percent (20 million) of all children under 18 years of age in
the United States lived with just one parent.
- The majority of children who lived with just one parent in 1998 lived
with their mother (84 percent).
- No other adults were present in the household for 56 percent of
children living with single parents.
- About 4 million children, nearly 6 percent of all children under 18,
lived in the household of their grandparents.
Data are from the March 1998 supplement to the Current Population
Survey. As in all surveys, the estimates are subject to sampling
variability and other sources of error.
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The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely,
relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United
States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an
economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and
economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in
1790.
