There is a lot to look here, but the main take away is that this unpartnered adults have been increasing significantly over the last 30 years. Men are generally more likely to be unpartnered than women. Also, there are significant ethnic differences.
“While the unpartnered population includes some adults who were previously married (those who are separated, divorced or widowed), all of the growth in the unpartnered population since 1990 has come from a rise in the number who have never been married.
This trend has broad societal implications, as does the growing gap in well-being between partnered and unpartnered adults. Looking across a range of measures of economic and social status, unpartnered adults generally have different – often worse – outcomes than those who are married or cohabiting. This pattern is apparent among both men and women.
Unpartnered adults have lower earnings, on average, than partnered adults and are less likely to be employed or economically independent. They also have lower educational attainment and are more likely to live with their parents. Other research suggests that married and cohabiting adults fare better than those who are unpartnered when it comes to some health outcomes.”
I don’t think our society is setup for singles, particularly singles as the majority. And we are getting pretty close. These findings are really interesting.
The 3% difference in partner/unpartner rates of men vs women is entirely accounted for by the 4% difference in being institutionalized (e.g. in prison). Really these types of studies should control for this.
> I don’t think our society is setup for singles, particularly singles as the majority. And we are getting pretty close. These findings are really interesting.
Social reproduction is the primary requirement to have a society in the first place, and adult singles don't participate in social reproduction at anywhere near the rates of married couples.
This is something that the society has to discourage in order to remain viable. Historically those who can't or won't participate in that process have taken on service roles that promote social reproduction, for example with nuns teaching schools, or priests reproducing the faith. People like this, together with widows, are really the only singles that are accepted by societies that survive across time, the others being subject to some social disapproval.
If you lose that drive to survive and perpetuate your society, which all western liberal societies have, then it's just a question of making people more comfortable as the entire society shuffles off the game board. We are truly a Ship of Fools.
To me this doesn't mean much demographically without information on what proportion of that 40% were ever married at any point, and whether they reproduced in that time. Otherwise you could just get a nation of single parents who split shortly after having children (leaving aside what we know about actual TFR rates in the West).
Yes, hypothetically you can have a society in which people marry, have kids, raise the kids, and then split. But that's not what's happening across the Western democracies.
Look, this issue of social reproduction is the biggest threat to liberal democracy, and it goes a long way back. In France, the same areas in which the most copies of Diderot's Encyclopédie were bought were the ones that started seeing both marriage and fertility declines. As the society as a whole proceeded to liberalize you started seeing population declines across the board.
I would add that things like child support benefits and other forms of social insurance -- the routine answer to all social ills in the West -- have not shown any efficacy in addressing this. It's not a welfare problem. Hungary has tried to give lots of money to increase fertility. Romania tried authoritarian techniques to increase fertility (fertility was a chronic problem in Eastern-bloc nations). None of that worked.
If you really believe that modern liberal societies are a viable concern, then you have to solve the problem of more and more people dying alone, having never married, and having no children. You have to solve the problem of people living isolated lives and not being integrated into tight family networks. Because over the long run, these defects will prove fatal.
>Look, this issue of social reproduction is the biggest threat to liberal democracy,
This is absolute alarmist nonsense. If you believe this, do you think that Europe is further down the path of moving away from liberal democracy than the US is thanks to the US having a larger birth rate?
I agree with the gist of what you write, but I think your text below (although correct) is misleading.
"But that's not what's happening across the Western democracies."
Western democracies do indeed have poor social reproduction, but I do NOT believe "Western" or democracy is the driving factor. If anything, your statement understates the issue because below replacement fertility rates are rapidly expanding and by no means restricted to the West or to democracies. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
There are ~ 90 countries where fertility is below replacement including disparate non-Western countries like UAE, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Lebanon, etc... including those that are not democratic.
> Social reproduction is the primary requirement to have a society in the first place, and adult singles don't participate in social reproduction at anywhere near the rates of married couples. This is something that the society has to discourage in order to remain viable.
Eh, but that depends on how many children the couples are having! And I don't think it would be such a terrible thing for the earth's human population to shrink somewhat.
We might have different ideas about what social reproduction means. I believe social reproduction occurs every time a social interaction occurs which reenforces social norms through social accountability. How many children people are having is more of a sexual reproduction topic to me.
The earth's human population is not going to shrink. The population of some groups will shrink and others will increase.
As secular societies are replaced by fundamentalist societies, the result will not be the earth having fewer people, but rather secular liberal belief systems and policy preferences disappearing.
Yes, you can prolong those policy preferences with a period of repression, but long term the future is not bright for either liberalism or modernism.
Take a look at the transformation of Israeli politics between 1990 and 2020. 58% of those under the age of 19 are ultra-orthodox and 30% are orthodox. That's 88% orthodox or ultra-orthodox. Israel used to be a fairly secular state with an orthodox minority. It is very rapidly going to be an orthodox population with a secular minority. This is not about overall populations increasing or decreasing, it's about the future belonging to those groups that reproduce themselves.
That depends. Can liberal belief systems convert the children of illiberal belief systems at an adequate rate? The approach that too many take these days, "We're self-evidently right, and if you can't see that you're so indoctrinated that you're blind"... that isn't going to cut it. Those with liberal beliefs have to do better than that, or they will lose.
Note that "liberal" is defined in the classical way, belief in liberty. It doesn't have to do with political left vs. right. And those with the liberal belief system may need to battle illiberals on the left as well as on the right. And even you, when you say "you can prolong those belief systems with a period of repression", I wonder how liberal you actually are. No, you cannot prolong those belief systems with repression, because once you turn to repression, you don't believe in the liberal belief system any more.
Also note that not all liberal belief systems are secular, and not all religious belief systems are either "fundamentalist" or illiberal.
> Unpartnered adults have lower earnings, on average, than partnered adults and are less likely to be employed or economically independent. They also have lower educational attainment and are more likely to live with their parents.
Although true, that might be reversing correlation and causation. It is quite easy to see why someone might struggle to attach themselves to a partner if they live with their parents, have low educational attainment and no job.
I'm in that age band, and I'm unlikely to ever get married. There are too many economic entanglements for it to be worth the risk of it, so few people of my age can afford to have children anymore anyways so it's not like there's any legal necessity left now that we all have insurance, and it only costs $10 and 10 minutes to notarize a domestic partnership declaration versus $50,000 and months of drama to satisfy the societal obligations of a Wedding(tm). Who has any energy left for drama these days? I sure don't.
I look forward to finding out whether universal basic incomes has a delayed effect on marriage rates over a ten year period, though.
When I was in SV during the dot com boom, the combination of the gender imbalance in the area (I seem to recall it being about 80 single women for every 100 single men between the ages of 20 and 29), the lack of having any firm tie to the area (no hope of getting a house - it was all single bedroom apartment rentals) and the, lets call it "cost of courtship" - it really didn't make financial sense to invest too much time or heart into dating and trying to get married.
Later and elsewhere, the expectation that I'd be the single source of income for a family of a previously divorced woman and step kids was a distinct turn off for trying to pursue a relationship later.
Having siblings get married, have kids, and get divorced and the continued difficulties with that a decade later makes marriage and kids even less appealing to someone who has never had either to see what benefit they provide (yes, I'm sure they do - I just don't know what it is in relationship to my own investment of time, money, and heart).
Now, I'm going to say I'm a grumpish graying beard who's too set in his ways.
Sure, it would be nice to have a partner in life to take some of the household decisions. Managing a house as a single adult is more difficult and expensive than doing it with a partner, but the degree of change that I am expected to make accommodations in my life just makes it feel not worth it to even try to pursue.
And as I write this, I'll note that I do have at least a bachelor's degree, I am employed, my salary is well above the median earnings reported, and I am not financially vulnerable; nor am I living in my parents' home, institutionalized, or have any children in the household. So in those respects for this survey, I'm atypical.
A relationship and need for connection is a built in primal need we have. The western mindset is heavily placing monogamist relationships in the context of a win-lose game. A zero sum game. No relationship survives this, as the whole point of being with another human is emotional growth, security and healthy dependence from each other.
Teal Swan has a brilliant video on the zero sum game mindset.
I'll grant the need for connection associated with a monogamist relationship.
The path my life has lead me through has gotten to the amount of effort to find and establish that relationship as part of courtship isn't worth it / required too much. Trying to find that relationship in SV in the late 90s through 00s when my life was most flexible lead to some substantial disappointments.
At this point, I'm not going to be looking for a woman in her 40s or 50s to try to settle down with - it just doesn't make sense. I don't have a desire to pursue the financial and time obligations of courtship.
In the frame of "win lose", finding the right person is win-win. However, trying and not finding someone enough times leaves one rather averse to trying again. One could try to attribute this to learned helplessness. Trying again isn't enjoyable / rewarding.
As it is, I am reasonably happy, content, and successful by myself. I have the resources and time to pursue what interests me to what I feel is a greater amount than if I was in a partnered relationship.
Western culture also frequently confuses (seemingly intentionally) the need for human connection and relationships with a societal pressure to reproduce. There are quite a lot of people who desire the former and not the latter, which opens the door to having a satisfactory social life without dating or marriage at all.
Taxes do unjustly (sexism, dick tax) punish single men, but the marriage deal is even more disadvantageous. Most marriages will end in divorce, and most divorces will end up very unfavorably for men.
Thus avoiding marriage stands to reason.
There should not be a legal concept of marriage to begin with. The state should just treat everybody as individuals, and end this anachronistic insanity.
Unfortunately biology doesn't treat everyone as equals. Women most often end up with the burden of raising the children. Marriage has a lot to do with making a commitment to stick around and help raise the kids.
Once the child is past the age of breast feeding, biology has nothing to do with how well you can raise a child. It might determine who ends up with the child since judges tend to favor women, but that has more to do with tradition than their innate parental expertise.
Married or not, you can decide to take off at any time. And married or not, a man may be forced to pay for a kids - even if it's not his biological kid.
Please don't pretend that mothers and mothers-to-be don't have any agency in the events that lead up to birth. Marriage has little to do with reproduction. It's a legal construct, not a natural one. The law should not be obligated to compensate for the edicts of biology and certainly not at the expense of another's economic freedom. A woman chooses to incubate, and raise children. Where coercion or duress are not involved, she should bear responsibility for what are all the consequences of her choices with regards to her body.
> In a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, 71% of U.S. adults said being able to support a family financially is very important for a man to be a good spouse or partner.
Sad to see this harmful stereotype still being perpetuated. Men need to be empowered to be stay-at-home spouses. Being a dad is a fulltime job.
>>>Sad to see this harmful stereotype still being perpetuated. Men need to be empowered to be stay-at-home spouses.
Studies and anecdata indicate that stay-at-home husbands have higher divorce rates, and lower rates of spousal satisfaction.[1][2] In other words, the wives who say they are comfortable with their husbands sitting at home with the kids...actually aren't. Trying to socially engineer that out of women's psyches will be about as successful as trying to convince them to date men who are shorter than them.
I’ve long given up on this idea that it’s perpetuated. If people want something, that’s what they want, no different than having a race or body type preference in a partner. What’s the alternative, to tell people the relationship attributes they want is wrong? Can’t squeeze the human out of the person.
In similar fashion, educated women won’t date down, while men will [1]. Should we tell them that’s wrong? I don’t think that’s reasonable nor feasible.
Educated women will have to date down unless other support structures help with child rearing. Possible, but anecdotally I’m starting to see this where the men aren’t toxic or incelly in behavior. The young men work, but aren’t the dominant breadwinners.
I think in previous generations there was a status issue with working women but the latest generation isn’t as hung up on that. Given how many of them probably grew up in divorced homes they’re going to be more pragmatic about their spouses.
I don't think this is very surprising as someone just below this age band. At my college, I've noticed a significant gap and some associated resentment exists as well, even though the gender ratio is near even and has the student population of a private R1. Some friends of mine cycle through dozens of potential partners easily and never appear to end up in a relationship in spite of wanting one. The issues of marriage are not a contributing factor either, since that is too far in the future to be relevant.
Online, you can easily find communities of men and women who lament not being able to find a partner, demanding that the opposite gender change their behavior. Such behavior is unproductive and toxic, but reflects a an unfortunate reality that there is a deadweight loss among people who are unpartnered.
It's sad overall that such a gap exists. A significant subset of the population is simply unable to meet the needs/get their own needs met of people they are interested in. I wonder what the long term outcome of this will be, but at minimum recognizing such a problem exists and attempting to do what we can for ourselves and others to be a good partner is probably the best we can do.
Family court, alimony, child support, paternity, the list of broken systems goes on. Essentially, if you're male in the US the disincentives around getting married are strong and real. Even cohabitating has serious risks associated with it.
The pew research didn't mention any of these issues. It's almost as if they think marriage/partnering is a solution. I saw wording multiple times almost suggesting that.
I'm not surprised people aren't partnering. Its a mess. The system is broken.
Those who disagreed with my comment very obviously haven't had to counsel men going through family court. Multiple relatives have needed assistance to do so. Family court and everything around divorce is entirely made more difficult than it ever should be. Broken is an understatement.
that number seems high to me when i look at my social and acquaintance circles, but as an unpartnered person in the age range i can certainly understand it...
the way i personally see it, having essentially made my money and now working only for cashflow and to occupy some time the risks of partnering up are 2 great should a divorce happen.
add to that my political views and lack of interest in raising someone elses kids the dating pool is almost entirely empty unless really pushing the 'age acceptable' limits (not looking for a trophy) and what is left is not attractive to me at all.
what i do wonder about for me, and those like me if the #'s are as high as this study says, is what is going to happen in old age w/ the lack of spouse, children, etc. to assist?
You can get a prenup. If you do "raise someone else's kids" though and they like you you will have people in old age to help you and visit. Otherwise it's the nursing home staff.
I encourage all sane, socially-well-adjusted, financially-stable men to simply date overseas. Excepting the recent COVID problem impairing travel, your dating pool is essentially all 3.5 billion women on the planet. Especially if you are willing to work remotely, there is almost no incentive to restrict yourself to your domestic regional/national women. Finding a fertile LOYAL childless woman with tolerable political views is not that difficult. You just need to search off the beaten path in developing countries. And then STAY OVERSEAS. Most countries don't have America's costly and misandrist divorce/alimony laws.
We need a central baby bank to target a minimum fertility rate... People will call it out because it failed to reach its target.
The baby bank will do baby QE, it will buy birth certificates and in exchange pay college tuition. Then people will say that baby QE does nothing. Just because people can pay tuition doesn't mean they actually go to college.
I don't think youu're far off. Similar happened in Japan and men (and women) became apathetic to sex or they sought sex services (soaplands) and near-sex alternatives like enjo kosai/mitsu (paid dates). We're just late to the sad party. In any event, we know "demand" for these "remote" in the sense of "removed" relationships is there.
“While the unpartnered population includes some adults who were previously married (those who are separated, divorced or widowed), all of the growth in the unpartnered population since 1990 has come from a rise in the number who have never been married.
This trend has broad societal implications, as does the growing gap in well-being between partnered and unpartnered adults. Looking across a range of measures of economic and social status, unpartnered adults generally have different – often worse – outcomes than those who are married or cohabiting. This pattern is apparent among both men and women.
Unpartnered adults have lower earnings, on average, than partnered adults and are less likely to be employed or economically independent. They also have lower educational attainment and are more likely to live with their parents. Other research suggests that married and cohabiting adults fare better than those who are unpartnered when it comes to some health outcomes.”
I don’t think our society is setup for singles, particularly singles as the majority. And we are getting pretty close. These findings are really interesting.