The majority of women in the United States — a record 52 percent — were unmarried in 2021, according to a report released Wednesday by Wells Fargo. The census bureau has been tracking Americans’ marital status since at least 1900, when just 7 percent of surveyed women were single. Among the factors driving the rapid rise in single-women households over the last decade: A 20 percent increase in the number of women who have never married.
But while decades of changing norms around marriage and work have empowered women to carve their own paths, a stubborn wage gap continues to keep many women, especially single mothers, from enjoying the same economic gains as single men and married couples. Never-married women earned just 92 percent of what never-married men did last year, and have 29 percent less wealth, Wells Fargo economists found….
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Women have made strides in just about every facet of the economy in recent decades. The number of women attending and graduating from college has outpaced men for years, according to government figures. Women are also more likely to buy their own homes, despite lower wages. Nearly 11 million single women owned their homes in 2021, compared with 8 million single men, according to a recent analysis of census data by LendingTree…
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Economists say those discrepancies are particularly concerning as more people put off marriage for longer periods of time. The median age of first-time marriage for women has steadily risen, from 25 in 2001 to 28 in 2021.
Single women — whether divorced, separated or never married — are more likely to be working than married women. The share of never-married women who are working or looking for work has risen nearly two percentage points in the past decade, even as the overall labor force participation rate has declined.
But their lower wages mean they have less spending power. Single women spent an average of $39,000 in 2021, compared with $41,000 for single men. But their buying patterns were considerably different: Women were more likely to spend on basics such as housing, health care and education than on entertainment, travel and dining out….