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.
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.
Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle in the United States. The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education—without college degrees—are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.
The American public is sharply divided in its judgments about the sweeping changes in the structure of the American family that have unfolded over the past half century. About a third generally accepts the changes; a third is tolerant but skeptical; and a third considers them bad for society.
The pre-eminent family unit of the mid-20th century—mom, dad and the kids—no longer has the stage to itself. A variety of new arrangements have emerged, giving rise to a broader and evolving definition of what constitutes a family.
One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession.
Americans believe that births to unwed women are a big problem for society, and they take a mixed view at best of cohabitation without marriage.
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