Marriage & Divorce

Money-sharing by cohabiting couples is the topic of this article, which focuses on the Census Bureau's new alternative measure of poverty. Cohabiting couples are much less likely to be considered poor under the alternative measure than the official measure of poverty'; the major reason is that the alternative measure assumes such couples share expenses, while the official measure assumes they are separate economic units.

Overview In the last four national elections, generational differences have mattered more than they have in decades. According to the exit polls, younger people have voted substantially more Democratic than other age groups in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006. The latest […]

The Census Bureau today released its first estimates of the number of same-sex married couples in the U.S., as well as alternatives counts to the published data for same-sex unmarried couples that try to account for data-processing issues.

This posting discusses the challenges for the Census Bureau in counting same-sex couples, married and unmarried. The accuracy of data depends on responses in Census Bureau questionnaires and bureau procedures to collect and edit responses, and the posting describes both.

Among adults ages 30 to 44, 7% lived with an opposite-sex partner as an unmarried couple in 2009.

This All Things Census posting announces a new Pew Research Center report using census data to explore the economics of cohabitation, which uses census data to compare the financial well-being of adults who are married, living with an unmarried opposite-sex partner, or not living with such a partner or spouse. The Census Bureau is releasing detailed local-level counts of unmarried couples over the summer.

The ongoing release of so-called SF1 data from the 2010 Census--detailed local-level tabulations about age, families, housing and other topics--has produced a wave of news stories about the changing family. Stories from newspapers in California and Pennsylvania focus especially on same-sex couples.

While the public is divided over same-sex marriage, a majority of Americans (58%) say that homosexuality should be accepted, rather than discouraged, by society. Among younger people in particular, there is broad support for societal acceptance of homosexuality. More than six-in-ten (63%) of those younger than 50 – 69% of those younger than 30 – […]

While the public is divided over same-sex marriage, a majority of Americans (58%) say that homosexuality should be accepted, rather than discouraged, by society. But there are wide political and religious differences in opinions on this measure.