Census Data Reveals Interesting Info on Singles, According to UA’s State Data Center

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – About 149,400 women in Alabama are raising children in a home with no husband present, according to data released by the U.S. Census.

“That’s up from about 141,000 in the year 2000,” said Annette Watters, manager of the Alabama State Data Center at The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce. “The number of men raising children without a wife is also on the rise,” Watters said, noting that Census information shows there were 29,000 single dads raising their kids in 2000; in 2006 there were about 33,000.

Watters also noted that this week is National Singles Week (Sept. 16-22), an observance started by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners, or are widowed.

Some other aspects of single life in Alabama supplied by Watters include:

• There are about 1.8 million Alabamians aged 15 and older who are not married. Some have never married (27 percent of all people in this age category), some are widowed (7.4 percent), some are separated (2.6 percent), and some are divorced (12 percent). “We are not surprised by the large percentage who have never married because the Census Bureau counts all persons aged 15 and older in its calculations,” Watters said. “Many teenagers would not expect to be allocated to this category, but since they are ‘of marriageable age’ they are lumped in with all other adults in the state for these statistics.”

• Forty-eight percent of all women in Alabama think they are married, but 54 percent of the men think they are married. “Maybe there’s an explanation,” Watters said. “Thirteen percent of women report they are divorced, compared with 11 percent of men. Three percent of women report they are separated, but only two percent of men. The percentages differ because the number of men and the number of women in the state are different.”

• Asians in Alabama are the most likely group to be married, with 66 percent reporting they are married. African-Americans are the least likely to be married. Thirty-two percent of blacks are married versus 43 percent who report they have never married. The divorce rate and the widowed rate are about the same for blacks and whites. American Indians are most likely to report they are divorced (nearly 19 percent) and Asians are the least likely to be divorced (4 percent). Among whites in Alabama, 57 percent are married, 21 percent have never married, 12 percent are divorced, 8 percent are widowed, and 2 percent are separated.

• The percentage of adults who are divorced peaks in the 45-to-54 age group for both men and women in Alabama, but there are significant numbers of divorced persons in the age groups just under and also just above. Being widowed is the most common reason for singleness for those aged 65 and over, not surprisingly. Nearly 48 percent of women in Alabama aged 65 and over are widows.

The Alabama State Data Center is part of the Center for Business and Economic Research, which is part of UA’s Culverhouse College of Commerce. The business school was established in 1919, and in 1929, it became the 38th school to earn admission into the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. The excellence of the UA business school has been acknowledged on a national level. The undergraduate program is ranked 29th among public universities by U.S. News, and the Culverhouse School of Accountancy is ranked 15th among public universities by U.S. News. The graduate accounting program is ranked 15th and the undergraduate program 14th by Public Accounting Report.