Economy Exacts Toll On Marriages

SOURCE: Associated Press

According to new data, the economic downturn has prompted a rise in the number of pleas for food stamps and spurred more troubled marriages as the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest ever.

The long recession technically ended in mid-2009, economists say, but U.S. Census data released Tuesday show the painful, lingering effects. The annual survey covers all of last year, when unemployment skyrocketed to 10 percent, and the jobless rate is still a stubbornly high 9.6%.

The figures also show that Americans on average have been spending about 36 fewer minutes in the office per week and are stuck in traffic a bit less than they had been. But that is hardly good news, either. The reason is largely that people have lost jobs or are scraping by with part-time work.

“Millions of people are stuck at home because they can’t find a job. Poverty increased in a majority of states, and children have been hit especially hard,” said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau.

Economic indicators “say we’re in recovery, but the impact on families and children will linger on for years,” he said.

Take marriage
In America, marriages fell to a record low in 2009, with just 52% of adults 18 and over saying they were joined in wedlock, compared to 57% in 2000.

The never-married included 46.3% of young adults 25-34, with sharp increases in single people in cities in the Midwest and Southwest, including Cleveland, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, N.M. It was the first time the share of unmarried young adults exceeded those who were married.

Marriages have been declining for years due to rising divorce, more unmarried couples living together and increased job prospects for women. But sociologists say younger people are also now increasingly choosing to delay marriage as they struggle to find work and resist making long-term commitments.

In dollar terms, the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are falling further behind them.

The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year by the largest margin ever, a stark divide as Democrats and Republicans spar over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

The top-earning 20% of Americans (those making more than $100,000 each year) received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4% earned by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

At the top, the wealthiest 5% of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

Three states — New York, Connecticut and Texas — and the District of Columbia had the largest gaps between rich and poor. Big gaps were also evident in large cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, home to both highly paid financial and high-tech jobs as well as clusters of poorer immigrant and minority residents.

Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Hawaii had the smallest income gaps.

“Income inequality is rising, and if we took into account tax data, it would be even more,” said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in poverty. “More than other countries, we have a very unequal income distribution where compensation goes to the top in a winner-takes-all economy.”

Lower-skilled adults ages 18 to 34 had the largest jumps in poverty last year as employers kept or hired older workers for the dwindling jobs available. The declining economic fortunes have caused many unemployed young Americans to double-up in housing with parents, friends and loved ones, with potential problems for the labor market if they don’t get needed training for future jobs, he said.

Homeownership declined for the third year in a row, to 65.9%, after hitting a peak of 67.3% in 2006. Residents in crowded housing held steady at 1 percent, the highest since 2004, a sign that people continued to “double up” to save money.

Average commute times edged lower to 25.1 minutes, the lowest since 2006, as fewer people headed to the office in the morning. The share of people who carpooled also declined, from 10.7% to 10%, while commuters who took public transportation were unchanged at 5%.

The number of U.S. households receiving food stamps surged by 2 million last year to 11.7 million, the highest level on record, meaning that 1 in 10 families was receiving the government aid. In all, 46 states and the District of Columbia had increases in food stamps, with the largest jumps in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin.

Other findings:

The foreign-born population edged higher to 38.5 million, or 4.5%, following a dip in the previous year, due mostly to increases in naturalized citizens. The share of U.S. residents speaking a language other than English at home also rose, from 19.7% to 20%, mostly in California, New Mexico and Texas.

The poorest poor hit record highs. More than two dozen states had increases in the share of people below $10,977 in income, half the poverty line for a family of four. The highest shares were in the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Kentucky and Arkansas. Nationally, the poorest poor rose to 6.3%.

Women’s average pay still lags men’s, but the gap is narrowing. Women with full-time jobs made 78.2% of men’s pay, up from 77.7% in 2008 and about 64% in 2000, as men took bigger hits in the recession.

More older people are working. About 27.1%of Americans 60 and over were in the work force. That’s up from 26.7% in 2008.

The census figures come weeks before the pivotal Nov. 2 congressional elections, when voters anxious about rising deficits and the slow pace of the economic recovery will decide whether to keep Democrats in control of Congress.

The 2009 tabulations, which are based on pretax income and exclude capital gains, are adjusted for household size where data are available. Prior analyses of after-tax income made by the wealthiest 1 percent compared to middle- and low-income Americans have also pointed to a widening inequality gap, but only reflect U.S. data as of 2007.

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MY TAKE: These census results are always pretty shocking for some to hear. The fact that women still make less than men for doing the same job, whether it’s marketing e cigarettes or running a licensed daycare center, is beyond. Not the selling electronic cigarettes and childcare share anything in common with one another as jobs or careers, but that the fact women can’t yet be seen as equal players in roles at companies everywhere, no matter what the product is no matter whether you believe in it or not.

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