The demographic context of recent change in the structure of American households.

This article examines recent changes in the structure of American households within the context of broad population changes. Decreases in married-couple households and increases in single-parent households are almost entirely due to the changing patterns of marriage, divorce, fertility, and child custody; headship rates for families have remained relatively stable. Increases in single-person and other nonfamily households are due to increases in the size of the unmarried, childless population and to the aging of this population. Increasing propensities to live alone or with nonrelatives were observed between 1970 and 1980, but these behavioral changes have abated during the early 1980s.