CENSUS 2000

CENSUS 2000
. . (reported in May, 01)

According to the Commerce Department's Census Bureau:

  1. The median age (meaning half are older and half younger) rose from 32.9 years in 1990 to 35.3 in 2000, the highest it has ever been.
  2. The number of males (138.1 million) edged closer to the number of females (143.4 million), raising the sex ratio (males per 100 females) from 95.1 in 1990 to 96.3 in 2000.
  3. The nation's housing units numbered 115.9 million, an increase of 13.6 million from 1990.
  4. The average household size in 2000 was 2.59, down slightly from 2.63 in 1990.
  5. Of the 105.5 million occupied housing units in 2000, 69.8 million were occupied by owners and 35.7 million by renters; the homeownership rate increased from 64 percent to 66 percent.
  6. The number of nonfamily households rose at twice the rate of family households 23 percent versus 11 percent.
  7. Families maintained by women with no husband present increased three times as fast as married-couple families --21 percent versus 7 percent. Married-couple families dropped from 55 percent to 52 percent of all households, from 248.7 million in 1990 to 281.4 million in 2000. The increase of 32.7 million people in the United States between 1990 and 2000 is the largest 10-year population increase in U.S. history. For the first time in the 20th century, all states gained population.
  8. New York continued to be the most populous metro area with a population of 21.2 million, followed by Los Angeles with a population of 16.4 million.
  9. In 2000, more than 8 out of 10 of the nation's population (226.0 million) lived in metropolitan areas.
The number of people living alone in America grew rapidly in the 1990s and for the first time less than a quarter of all households consisted of married couples with children. The number of American single-person households amounted to 26 percent of all households while households with married couples and children under 18 dropped to 23.5 percent from 25.6 percent in 1990, and 45 percent four decades ago.
. . The new figures showed that living together without getting married is no longer taboo, with the number of unmarried people living as couples increasing by 72 percent to 5.47 million in 2000 from 3.19 million in 1990. Some of those unmarried couples have children.
. . The number of Americans living alone surpassed traditional nuclear families in number. In 1940, less than 8 percent of all households were made up of people living alone compared to nearly a quarter in 2000.
. . The shift in living arrangements was reflected in the nation's average household size, which hit a record low last year of 2.59 people from 2.63 a decade earlier.
. . The number of families led by women with no husband present grew nearly three times faster in the 1990s than the number of married couples with children. Married-couple families dropped from 55 percent to 52 percent of all homes.
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