The Wrongologist

It is often said that
demographics is destiny. One emerging demographic trend is that a growing
number of Americans are choosing to
remain single.

It turns out that this trend had a huge impact in the
2012 Presidential election. According to Hanna
Rosin at Slate, the most
significant division within the electorate happened around marriage:  As shown in this Washington Post interactive report about
2012 exit polls, (in the section labeled sex
by marital status), non married men and women were solidly for Mr. Obama
while married men and women were solidly for Mr. Romney.

Here are the numbers:

Singleness, the temporary or permanent postponement of marriage and parenting,
are factors that shrink the birth rate. Surprisingly, they are also the very best predictor of a person’s politics in the US, better
than income and education levels, so
says Ron Lesthaeghe, a Belgian demographer at University of Michigan. He
finds that larger family size correlates
with early marriage and childbirth, lower women’s employment, and
opposition to gay rights, all social factors that lead voters towards
conservative candidates. 

The
2011 US birth rate is at a record low. The marriage rate is tumbling and the
number of single Americans is now at a record high. The convergence of these
trends could have far-reaching implications not only for our politics but also
for the economy:  

• Singles
  account for 111 million eligible voters

• Overall, 40%
  of the people who voted in 2012 were single

• They
  are a part of the population have not been well studied demographically. We
  know how many men and women will be eligible to vote in 2030, but there is nothing to predict the number
  of singles we’ll have

A Nation of Singles – Implications
For the Future

The
Weekly Standard sponsored a post-election
demographic study. The ranks of unmarried women and men are now at historic
highs and continue to increase. This marriage gap and its implications for our
political and economic future are not well understood.  Here are some facts from that study:

• Between
  1910 and 1970, the percentage of people who marry at some point in their lives,
  was never below 92.8%. Beginning in 1970, that number began a
  gradual decline so that by 2000 it stood at only 88.6%. Today, 24% of men and 19% of women between the ages of 35 and 44 have
  never been married

• For
  people between 20 and 34, the prime-childbearing years, the numbers are 67% of
  men and 57% of women in this group have never been married

Geographically,
this group tends to live in cities. As urban density increases, marriage rates
(and childbearing rates) fall in nearly a straight line.

Of the 111 million eligible single
voters,
53 million are women and 58 million are men. Only 5.7 million of these women
are Hispanic and 9.7 million are African American. Nearly three-quarters of all
single women are white.

Returning
to the 2012 election results, Mr. Obama was +16% with single men and +36% with
single women. But the real news was
that their share of the total vote increased by a whopping 6 percentage points over 2008.

That
6 percentage point increase meant 7.6 million more single
voters than in 2008. They provided Obama with a margin of 2.9 million votes,
about two-thirds of his margin of victory. To put this in some perspective, the
wave of Hispanic voters we’ve heard so much about increased its share of the
total vote from 2008 to 2012 by only a single point to roughly 12.5 million
voters. 

Are
we creating a permanent class of singles?

We know
that women are increasingly are graduating from college and joining the
workforce, and postponing marriage. From
2000 to 2010, the number of unmarried women increased 18%, according to
census data.

In 1960, the average American woman married
at age 20. Now it’s 27. That is partly the cause of a boom in solo living, with nearly one-third of all US households
comprised of single people living alone, according to Eric Klinenberg, an
NYU sociologist and author of Going
Solo:The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. In 1950,
it was 9%.

Single
men are largely younger than single women, who are more evenly spread across
all age groups. They are also more likely to be unemployed than are single
women.

What are the economic implications
of a larger and permanent singles class?

Currently,
singles make up 49% of the American population, and 28% of all households
consist of one person, the highest levels of singledom in American history.

Perhaps more
important, singletons are fueling the economy. The BLS estimates that consumption
by singles in the US contributes $1.9 trillion to the economy each year.

They spend
more discretionary dollars than their married counterparts. Their average per
capita annual expenditure was $34,471 in 2010, according to the federal
Consumer Expenditure survey, compared with $28,017 for married individuals
without kids and $23,179 per person in the highest-spending families with
children.

Singles
buy one-third of the homes in the US today. Unmarried men and women account for
10% and 21% of all buyers, respectively, according to the National Association
of Realtors.

But it isn’t
all wonderful to be a single person in America. A survey from Generation
Opportunity, a nonprofit dedicated to engaging young adults on economic
issues, shows that college graduates and 20-somethings are delaying important
life decisions like marriage and having children.

The post-great recession economy has brought a challenging job market, lower
earnings, and a greater chance of moving back home with parents for many recent
college graduates. As a result, many are consciously pushing off milestones
like marriage and family.

Generation
Opportunity executive vice president Amber Roseboom said in a statement that
young women’s “careers and dreams have been interrupted”.

So,
What’s Right, and What’s Wrong?

We
will see fewer children, smaller homes and apartments, fewer mini-vans, fewer
schools, fewer obstetricians, fewer toy manufacturers, fewer big box stores,
fewer Republicans.

And
more savings, more investing, more vacations, more self-actualization services,
more clothing manufacturers, more Democrats elected.

More soon about the other side of the
coin: Falling birthrates
and what they mean for our economy.