August 14, 2006

Unmarrieds and Singles, Your Time is Coming

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By which I mean National Unmarried and Single Americans Week (Sept. 17-23) is coming! So plan something. Go out. Or stay home. The week is an opportunity to join together (temporarily!) to, as this website puts it, “C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E the lives and contributions of unmarried and single Americans!” In any event, here, via ResourceShelf, are some “fast facts” from the U.S. Census about this segment of the population (which comprises about 90 million people, or 41 percent of all U.S. residents age 18 and older).

Single Life
54
Percentage of unmarried and single Americans who are women.

60
Percentage of unmarried and single Americans who have never been married. Another 25 percent are divorced and 15 percent are widowed.

14.9 million
Number of unmarried and single Americans age 65 and older. These older Americans comprise 14 percent of all unmarried and single people.

86
Number of unmarried men age 18 and older for every 100 unmarried women in the United States.

55 million
Number of households maintained by unmarried men or women. These households comprise 49 percent of households nationwide.

29.9 million
Number of people who live alone. These persons comprise 26 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970

Parenting
32
Percentage of births in 2004 to unmarried women.

12.9 million
Number of single parents living with their children in 2005. Of these, 10.4 million are single mothers.

40
Percentage of opposite-sex, unmarried-partner households that include children.

672,000
Number of unmarried grandparents who were caregivers for their grandchildren in 2004. They comprised nearly 3-in-10 grandparents who were responsible for their grandchildren. (Source: American FactFinder)

Unmarried Couples
4.9 million
Number of unmarried-partner households in 2005. These households consist of a householder living with someone of the opposite sex who was identified as their unmarried partner.

Dating
904
The number of dating service establishments nationwide as of 2002. These establishments, which include Internet dating services, employed nearly 4,300 people and pulled in $489 million in revenues.

Voters
36
Percentage of voters in the 2004 presidential election who were unmarried.

Education
82
Percentage of unmarried people age 25 or older in 2004 who were high-school graduates.

23
Percentage of unmarried people age 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or more education.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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