It's Time to Restore Fading Families

Terence P. Jeffrey on Apr 3, 2024

In a majority of this nation's states (31 out of 50), the percentage of households headed by opposite-sex married couples was at least double the 22.8% the Census Bureau reported for the nation's capital.

"While married-couple households made up the greatest proportion of coupled households, their share has been in steady decline over the past several decades," the Census Bureau said in an analysis published last week. "From 1968 to 2018, the share of adults ages 25 to 34 living with a spouse decreased from 81.5 percent to 40.3 percent, while the share living with an unmarried partner increased from 0.2 percent to 14.8 percent."

In 2020, the Census Bureau expanded its data collection on American "couples."

"The U.S. Census Bureau revised the relationship to householder question in the 2020 Census to improve the quality of coupled-household data after discovering issues with the measurement of coupled households in the 2010 Census," the bureau said in a May 25, 2023, release. One revision included adding "specific answer categories for opposite-sex spouse; opposite-sex unmarried partner, same-sex spouse, same-sex unmarried partner."

So, which states in 2020 had the highest percentages of households headed by opposite-sex unmarried couples?

Vermont led the nation with 9.0%.

The top 10 also included Maine (8.9%); Oregon (8.2%); Alaska (8.1%); Nevada (8.1%); New Hampshire (8.1%); New Mexico (7.6%); Washington (7.6%); Wisconsin (7.6%); and Arizona and Rhode Island tied with 7.3%.

Utah, which led the nation with 57.8% of its households headed by opposite-sex married couples, tied Alabama for the smallest percentage of households headed by opposite-sex unmarried couples (4.9%).

Following Utah and Alabama at the bottom of this category were Mississippi (5.2%); South Carolina (5.5%); Georgia (5.6%); Virginia (5.7%); Texas (5.7%); New Jersey (5.8%); North Carolina (5.9%); Maryland (5.9%) and Arkansas (5.9%).

There were two other categories where the Census Bureau data showed that the District of Columbia beat all the states. These were the percentages of households headed by married and unmarried same-sex couples.

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