Less than 18 percent of the 130 million households in the United States feature married parents with children, according to the latest census data. This represents a decline of more than 40 percent since 1979.
There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with nuclear families, which is the fewest since 1959 when the nation had almost 50% fewer people. “The reasons given for the drop include the pandemic delaying marriage and a continued decline in birth rate.
The average age of a woman at her first marriage is now 28.6 years. In the 1950s and 60s, women typically married at 20.4 years old. The average age for men to marry for the first time in 2021 was 30.4 years old. America’s fertility rate dropped to 55.4 births per 1,000 in the second quarter of 2021, down from 58.5 in the same period of 2019.
Americans also are living alone at a higher rate than they used to. The percentage of adults in the United States living with a spouse was 50 percent, down from 52 percent 10 years ago. More than 37 million adults lived alone in early 2021, up from 33 million in 2011. As far back as 1960, 87 percent of adults lived with a spouse.
Analysts and commentators have pointed toward declining rates of religiosity, higher living expenses, the permutation of LGBTQ ideology and even climate alarmism to explain the erosion of the American family. Indeed, the United States economy is already feeling pressure from the nation’s demographic crisis — for example, through the looming insolvency of Social Security and other programs.
Noticing these dangers, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk commented at a recent summit that civilization will “crumble” unless people begin having more children.
“I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate,” he said. “And yet so many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers — if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”
–Lee Hartman | Metro Voice