D’Vera Cohn is a senior writer and editor at Pew Research Center. She was a Washington Post reporter for 21 years, mainly writing about demographics, and was the newspaper’s lead reporter for the 2000 Census. After leaving the newspaper in 2006, she served as a consultant and freelance writer for the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, Brookings Institution and Population Reference Bureau. She also has advised the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism on demographic topics, and has spoken at national journalism conferences about how reporters can make use of demographic data in stories. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she is a former Nieman Fellow.

A new Pew Research Center report analyzes trends in marriage rates, age at first marriage and number of new marriages. It finds that barely half of U.S. adults are married, continuing a downward trend. In addition, the median age at first marriage for men and women has never been higher. And the number of people who married within the past year fell 5% from 2009 to 2010.

Barely half of all adults in the United States—a record low—are currently married, and the median age at first marriage has never been higher for brides and grooms.

Money-sharing by cohabiting couples is the topic of this article, which focuses on the Census Bureau's new alternative measure of poverty. Cohabiting couples are much less likely to be considered poor under the alternative measure than the official measure of poverty'; the major reason is that the alternative measure assumes such couples share expenses, while the official measure assumes they are separate economic units.

The Census Bureau has just published the results from its new alternative measure of poverty, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, and they differ notably from the poverty rates shown by the official measure that’s been used since the 1960s. A new report by the Pew Hispanic Center compares results under both measures for key demographic groups.

A new Pew Research Center report explores the demographics and economics of multi-generational households. It concludes that moving to a multi-generational household appears to lift Americans out of poverty, and this is especially true for groups most affected by the recession. Household incomes also are higher for some groups in multi-generational households.

A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center explores and analyzes the poverty rate for Hispanic children. Latino children now outnumber white children in poverty for the first time, according to census data cited in the report.

The Census Bureau today released its first estimates of the number of same-sex married couples in the U.S., as well as alternatives counts to the published data for same-sex unmarried couples that try to account for data-processing issues.

The Census Bureau today released data from the 2010 American Community Survey that expands on the basic demographics in the 2010 Census. Links to the data and special reports are included in this posting.

The 2011 Canada Census exceeded its targets for online response, and the overall response rate in 2011 was higher than it had been in 2006, according to a news account. The success of the online response campaign in Canada will be studied by U.S. Census Bureau officials, who intend to offer an online option in the 2020 Census.

Pew Research Center reports can add context to the Census Bureau's release of 2010 data on U.S. income, poverty and health insurance coverage. These Pew Research Center reports, linked to in this article, have documented the impact of the Great Recession and shaky recovery on Americans’ wealth, work lives, personal finances and emotional well-being.