Snapshot of a Changing America

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"The United States themselves," wrote Walt Whitman, "are essentially the greatest poem." That epic is remade by every new generation, and today its rhythm, structure and content are unlike any that went before. The nation is growing middle-aged and more solitary. Men and women are delaying marriage, delaying childbirth, having few or no children at all. Real income, once expected to rise as naturally as a hot-air balloon, has leveled off. For many, home ownership, once thought of as practically a constitutional right, has become a dream denied. Demography is destiny, and Americans of today, in ways both obvious and subtle, are inventing the America of tomorrow.

Most of the changes have been triggered by the baby-boom generation. Born between 1946 and 1964, they are 75 million strong, one out of every three Americans, the largest generation in U.S. history. Next year the oldest of them will turn 40. The generation that could hum TV jingles before it could hum the national anthem, that made rock 'n' roll and protest into rites of passage, and swore never to trust anyone over 30, is becoming middle-aged.

In 1983 the median age of the population reached 30.9, the oldest ever, and is expected to exceed 36 by the year 2000. People who fox-trotted to Tommy Dorsey now outnumber those who hip-hop to Cyndi Lauper; for the first time in history, there are more Americans over 65 than there are teenagers. Notes Karl Zinsmeister, an economic demographer at the American Enterprise Institute: "By the late 1980s, one-half of our households will be headed by baby boomers. One-fourth of our population will be elderly. These two groups will define our society for a very long time."

Single people now account for 23% of all U.S. households. As many as 8% of today's adults will never marry.

Remember when unmarried men were called bachelors and unmarried women spinsters? Many of the 50 million "singles" in America are too young to recall. The Census Bureau reports that from 1970 to 1983 the proportion of never married singles ages 20 to 24 increased from 36% to 56% among women and from 55% to 73% among men. During that period, single-person households increased by 8.5 million. According to the Census Bureau, the increasing number of unmarried people in the pivotal 30-to-34 age bracket "suggests that an increasing proportion of persons may never marry."

Families with single heads grew by 69% from 1970 to 1983. One out of every five children, and more than half of all black children, lives in a one-parent household.

"Typical" is no longer an adjective that can describe the American household. Fifteen years ago, 40% of all households consisted of husband, wife and children; today that figure is 28.5%. The stereotypical nuclear family of mom, dad and two kids now accounts for only 11% of all households.

The number of female-headed households with one or more children under 18 doubled from 1970 to 1982, from 2.9 million to 5.9 million. During the 1970s the divorce rate shot up by half. Although it has dropped slightly, the U.S. rate remains the highest among all Western nations. Out-of-wedlock births jumped by 67% from 1970 to 1980.