The Impact of Family Structure Has Changed

​Society has changed from the early years. Many families have changed from being a two-parent household family to a single-parent household family. This resulted in a change in lifestyles of many families in America where divorce rates increased the number of single-parent households.

• Sixty-six percent of households in 2012 were family households, down from 81% in 1970.

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• Between 1970 and 2012, the share of households that were married couples with children under 18 halved from 40% to 20%.

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• The proportion of one-person households increased by 10 percentage points between 1970 and 2012, from 17% to 27%.

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• Between 1970 and 2012, the average number of people per household declined from 3.1 to 2.6 (The Census Bureau report in the 2013 American Community Survey).