The past few weeks have been very busy, but I have been blessed to have been with a great group of Kingdom citizens. A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to speak at the annual retreat for the church planters partnering with the Missouri Baptist Convention. Last week, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the North American Mission Leaders Conference (partnership of Cross Global Link, The Mission Exchange, and The Evangelical Missiological Society). On top of this I am coming upon a couple of major writing deadlines. Such matters eat up possible blogging time.
I write this to share with you the reason for my lack of recent blog posts.
While I recognize that I am in the middle of a series regarding my concerns with most North American church planting strategies, I want to interrupt the series to share with you some important data on the unmarried and single adult population in the United States. May the following information assist you in thinking missiologically about this country.
The following data is from the U. S. Census Bureau’s periodic email, “Facts for Featu
res“.
You may have missed it, but September 19-25 for many years, was recognized as “National Singles Week.” This was started by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio in the 80’s to “celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society.”
However, this year, it was renamed as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” to acknowledge the many unmarried Americans “who do not identify with the word ‘single’ because they are parents, have partners or are widowed.”
Unless otherwise noted, the statistics on unmarried people listed below “include those who were never married, widowed, or divorced.”
- 96.6 million: Number of unmarried Americans 18 and older in 2009. This group comprised 43 percent of all U.S. residents 18 and older.
- 53%: Percentage of unmarried Americans 18 and older who were women.
- 61%: Percentage of unmarried Americans 18 and older who had never been married. Another 24 percent were divorced, and 15 percent were widowed.
- 16.2 million: Number of unmarried Americans 65 and older. These older Americans comprised 17 percent of all unmarried and single people 18 and older.
- 88: Number of unmarried men 18 and older for every 100 unmarried women in the United States.
- 52.5 million: Number of households maintained by unmarried men or women. These households comprised 45 percent of households nationwide.
- 31.7 million: Number of people who lived alone. They comprised 27 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970.
- 33%: Percentage of women age 15 to 50 with a birth in the last 12 months, as of 2006, who either were widowed, divorced or never married. About 199,000 were living with an unmarried partner.
- 11.6 million: Number of single parents living with their children in 2009. Of these, 9.9 million were single mothers and 1.7 million were single fathers.
- 38%: Percentage of opposite-sex, unmarried-partner households that included at least one biological child of either partner.
- 766,000: Number of unmarried grandparents who were caregivers for their grandchildren in 2008. They comprised about three in 10 grandparents who were responsible for their grandchildren.
- 6.2 million: Number of unmarried-partner households in 2008. Of this number, 565,000 were same-sex.
- 904: The number of dating service establishments nationwide as of 2002. These establishments, which include Internet dating services, employed nearly 4,300 people and generated $489 million in revenues.
- 38%: Percentage of voters in the 2008 presidential election who were unmarried.
- 84%: Percentage of unmarried people 25 and older in 2009 who had a high school diploma or more.
- 24%: Percentage of unmarried people 25 and older in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree or more education.
