Family Structure
Married couple households are still the norm
More boomers never married (about 10 percent), compared to their parents’ generation (less than 5 percent)
Married boomers are likely to spend less of their life living with a spouse than their parents did
Boomer women are more likely to be raising children alone. This particularly affects African American women.
Notes:
Women are not only more likely than men to be single heads of households, but they are more financially disadvantaged when they are. Women of all races have this problem, but a larger percentage of African American women are affected—when they were ages 25 to 34, they were almost as likely to be single heads of households (30%) as in married couple households (36%).
All of these trends have implications for financial resources and social relationships, now and in later life. We will touch on some of these later.