Divorce among 50-somethings has doubled since 1990. One in five adults have never married, up from one in ten 30 years ago. In all, a majority of American adults are now single, government data show, including the mothers of two out of every five newborns.
As Bloomberg reports in a new analysis of the U.S. economy and its effect on American families, these trends are often blamed on feminists or gay rights activists or hippies, who’ve somehow found a way to make Americans reject tradition.
But the last several years showed a different powerful force changing families: the economy.
The effects of the Great Recession on families are hard to ignore. Births and marriages have plunged, as millions of millennials skip or delay starting traditional families. The economic uncertainty of the downturn dismantled job security which, in turned, ripped up many wedding plans.
Families that have made unconventional arrangements are the most financially fragile. An Allianz survey of 4,500 Americans included an extra sample of families outside the historical norm, including single parents, same-sex couples and blended families. These “modern families” were less financially secure than traditional families, the study found. They were 50% more likely to have unexpectedly lost their main form of income—and twice as likely to have declared bankruptcy. Read the full story.
