Dear Miss Manners:
I am 40 years old, and by a series of unfortunate events and three broken engagements in the past two decades, still a single woman. This is not necessarily a status that I celebrate.
And so another single person writes in to explain…
See the letter from the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/18/AR2009081803382.html
This is nothing new, a way for a single person to save money. So here’s a link to a post on eating and saving money called Eating Well on a Budget for the Single Person. I wouldn’t try this with a new date.
Okay, so those are some statistics. There are of course more where those came from.
But who cares? Besides having a sizable group, bigger than AARP even, how does that impact me as an individual. I guess I really am not alone…and neither are you.
“National Singles Week” was started by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed during the third full week of September as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed. Here’s some illuminating statistics about us singletons, courtesy of the Census Bureau:
92 million: Number of unmarried Americans 18 and older in 2006. This group comprised 42 percent of all U.S. residents 18 and older.
54%: Percentage of unmarried Americans 18 and older who are women.
60%: Percentage of unmarried Americans 18 and older who have never been married.
Another 25 percent are divorced, and 15 percent are widowed.
15 million: Number of unmarried Americans 65 and older. These older Americans comprise
16 percent of all unmarried and single people 18 and older.
86: Number of unmarried men 18 and older for every 100 unmarried women in the United States.
50.7 million: Number of households maintained by unmarried men or women. These households comprise 44 percent of households nationwide.
30.5 million: Number of people who live alone. They comprise 27 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970.
35%: Percentage of births in the last 12 months, as of 2006, to women who either were separated, widowed, divorced or never married. Of these 1.5 million unmarried mothers, 199,000 were living with an unmarried partner.
12.9 million: Number of single parents living with their children in 2006. Of these, 10.4 million were single mothers.
733,000: Number of unmarried grandparents who were caregivers for their grandchildren in 2006. They comprised about three in 10 grandparents who were responsible for their grandchildren.
Charlotteobserver.com 9/08
Many people are single. Just how many? Lots….
This website will be devoted to those who are single by accident, choice, circumstance, definition, you get the point.