Although there has been a lot of talk about the crowded nest in the wake of the Great Recession, in fact average household size fell to a record low in 2012.
According to the Census Bureau, only 2.55 people live in the average American household. The previous low was 2.56 people per household in 2007 and 2008. Behind shrinking household size is the aging of the population. On average, Americans are getting older, and older people are most likely to live alone. The number of single-person households expanded to 33.2 million in 2012, a record high and 2 million more than before the Great Recession in 2007. The rising fortunes of the elderly are also behind the increase. Householders aged 65 or older were the only ones to see their median household income grow during the past decade.
Overall, 13.4 percent of Americans aged 15 or older live alone. The figure ranges from a low of 3.2 percent among people under age 25 to a high of 28.5 percent among people aged 65 or older.
Source: Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in the United States: 2011--Detailed Tables
1 comment:
Really fascinating...and hard to understand. There has been an undersupplying of new homes built over the past five years. It begs the question: where are all these people living???
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