Word: censuses
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...surface, at least, the census statistics continue to show a dramatic deterioration in orthodox marriages. Between 1970 and this year, the share of married couples among the nation's 86.8 million households fell from 70.5% to 58%, replaced by an explosion of single people living alone. Some 20.6 million Americans now live by themselves, a 90% jump in one-person households over 15 years. Much of this is due to widowhood or divorce, as is the near doubling since 1970 of single people who head households. Single-parent families now account for 14.3% of U.S. households...
...century. High rents are also forcing young adults to remain at home. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 62% of men and 47% of women still live with their parents--a mixed blessing that neither parents nor restive children may prefer. "Home is where the cheap eats are," notes Census Bureau Demographer Steve Rawlings. "The nest isn't emptying as it once...
Baby boomers tend to play more roles than did most of their predecessors. In 1940, notes Census Bureau Demographer Art Norton, "there were fewer important life-course events in American living. People got married at 21, finished child-bearing at 31, had a spouse die at 64 and lived alone after that." Now an individual may experiment with independent living, live as part of an unmarried couple, get married and divorced a number of tunes, live with children without a spouse. Says Norton: "There are all kinds of new transition points." Yet the rate of change has leveled...
...creating a new generation of illiterates." With those words, Robert Barnes, an official of the U.S. Department of Education, last week released a chilling analysis of a basic literacy test given by the Bureau of the Census to 3,400 Americans age 20 and over. Thirteen percent flunked the test, able to answer only 20 or fewer of the 26 multiple-choice questions. (Sample: Don't allow your medical identification card to a) be used b) have destroy c) go lose d) get expired by any other person.) "It was a pretty simple test," notes Barnes dryly...
...offered the test refused to take it, most for fear of revealing their illiteracy. From these results, Barnes projects that 17 million to 21 million adults in the U.S. cannot read. And this is only some of the bad news. The figures refute the impression, based on a 1979 Census Bureau study, that only one-half of 1% of Americans over 14 are illiterate. This survey assumed that anyone who had finished the fifth grade could read, and fostered the notion that most illiterates are elderly rural people who never got that far in school. The new study shows that...