September 3, 2008

What’s a U.S. family? Statistics give a glimpse
By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service

In many parts of the country, all it takes to get a sense of how the characteristics of the U.S. population have changed is to read through the restaurant listings in the telephone directory or the local newspaper.

Outside of big metropolitan areas, “ethnic” food restaurant choices a generation ago might have consisted of a handful of pizzerias and spaghetti joints, a couple of Chinese take-out places and, maybe, a diner advertising “Greek night” once a week.

Today, the same listings may include everything from Burmese cafes to Brazilian steakhouses and carryout rice bowls prepared Japanese-style with teriyaki and ginger, Mexican-style with pinto beans and green chili, or Jamaican-style with red beans and plantains. Not only does the variety of cuisines reflect the nation’s changed demographics, so too might newspaper ads for “early bird” and “senior citizen” specials in communities far from the traditional retiree regions in the Southeast and the Sun Belt.

People are marrying later, divorcing more often, having fewer children and living in all sorts of nontraditional households. There are established communities of Hmong Laotian immigrants in Minnesota, Mexicans populate Delaware’s poultry-raising region, and Sudanese refugees sell winter clothes at Wal-Marts in Wisconsin.

With all these variations, just what constitutes a “family” in the United States these days?

Here are some of the statistics that define the U.S. population at the beginning of the 21st century:
• The 2000 census counted 11.1 percent of the nation’s population of 281 million people to be foreign-born. Of those, the majority—52 percent—were from Latin America, including 30 percent of the total coming from Mexico. Twenty-six percent were from Asia, 16 percent from Europe and 3 percent or less each came from North America, Africa and Oceania.
• Of immigrants, 40 percent were naturalized U.S. citizens in 2000. More than 81 percent of the foreign-born residents who arrived before 1970 had become citizens by 2000. Of those who arrived between 1990 and 2000, 13.4 percent had obtained U.S. citizenship by the time of the census. Those percentages are likely to be higher now, after a wave of naturalization applications were filed following immigration-law crackdowns after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
• Half the foreign-born population lived in California, New York and Texas. The percentage of local population that was foreign born had the biggest increases in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, each of which grew by more than 200 percent between 1990 and 2000. In the latter three states, more than half of the new immigrants were from Latin America.
• A majority of U.S. households still are composed of at least two related people. Just over 51 percent consisted of married couples, with or without children; while 12 percent of households consisted of a woman and a relative (who could be one or more children, siblings and/or parents) and 4 percent were made up of “male householders” with another relative.
• Thirty-two percent of the nation’s households were listed as “nonfamily,” of which 26 percent were single-person households. The remaining 6 percent consisted of unrelated people living together.
• Forty-four percent of women of child-bearing age (considered to be ages 15 to 44) had no children in 2002. Of those approaching the end of their childbearing years (40-44, for census purposes), 18 percent were childless, compared to 10 percent of women in that age group in 1976.
• Approximately 1.3 million women, or 33 percent of all who gave birth in 2001, were unmarried when they had a child that year. A majority of those were women who had never married, as opposed to those who were widowed or divorced before they gave birth. In 2002, 89 percent of teen mothers were unmarried, compared to 50 percent of new mothers in their early 20s and 12 percent of women over 30.
• Less than 4 percent of the nation’s households consisted of grandparents living with grandchildren who were under the age of 18. Of those grandparents, 42 percent were counted as caregivers to the grandchildren.
• Nineteen percent of households where grandparents are caregivers to their grandchildren fell below the poverty level. For households with children overall, 14 percent were below poverty level