NEW YORK — Nowhere else is living alone celebrated the way it is in Manhattan, where solo dwelling has been exulted in pop culture from “Seinfeld” to “Sex and the City.” But single living declined during the past decade in Manhattan, though it still is the nation’s capital of single-person households. At the same time, living alone grew nationwide to an unprecedented level, particularly in parts of the West — including Colorado — and South, according to an Associated Press analysis of 2010 census data.
Escalating rents during the past decade, as well as the perception that New York’s most captivating borough is more family-friendly than in years past, forced a dip in the rate in Manhattan — from 48 percent of households in 2000 to 46.3 percent in 2010.
Nationwide, the rate has reached an all-time high — almost 27 percent of households.
Sociologists say long-term consequences of this phenomenon are showing already. Parents — whose children in years past moved out only after they married — now have less opportunity to influence whom their children select as mates, resulting in more interreligious and interracial marriages. More seniors, especially women, are living by themselves into their later years. And planners and developers are figuring out how to accommodate the extra long-term demand for housing.
“I see the rise of living alone as one of the great demographic changes in modern history,” said New York University sociologist Eric Klineberg, author of the soon-to-be-published “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.”
“It may be the last great social change that we haven’t fully come to terms with.”
The biggest growth in solo dwelling has been in small communities such as Colorado’s Park County and Georgia’s Chattahootchee County, near Fort Benning — a result of other parts of the nation catching up with what had been a big-city trait.
Nationally, women are more likely than men to live alone. A major reason is that older women tend to outlive their male mates, and older men tend to marry younger women. For under-45 single dwellers, men outnumber women, mainly because women are more likely to live with their children than men, and women marry at a younger age than men, said Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld.
North Dakota had the highest percentage of solo living of any state — 31.5 percent. Utah had the nation’s lowest rate of solo living at 18.7 percent, a result of the dominance of Mormon culture that emphasizes marrying early and having children.
