Census: Households With Children with an Unemployed Parent Increased 33 Percent from 2005 to 2011

    A Census Bureau report released on Tuesday says that the number of households with children under 18 with at least one unemployed parent increased by 33 percent between 2005 and 2011 from 2.4 million to 3.2 million.  In addition, home ownership among households with children under 18 declined by 15 percent to 20.8 million during that same time period.
    The report is entitled America's Families and Living Arrangements: 2012 and touches on all aspects of the living arrangements of Americans.  Jamie Lewis a demographer for the Census Bureau and co-author of the report says that while the recession had an impact, the effects have not dissipated since the recession ended:

Home ownership among families declined, while food stamp receipt and parental unemployment increased. Even after the recession officially ended in 2009, these measures remained worse than before it began.

    Other parts of the report show some dramatic changes in American households in the last several decades.  For instance:

The share of households that consisted of married couples with children shrunk by half between 1970 and 2012, from 40 percent to 20 percent. At the same time, the percentage of households consisting of a person living alone climbed from 17 percent to 27 percent.

    Some other notable report findings:

• A higher percentage of young adults age 25 to 34 lived in their parents' home in 2012 than in the early 2000s. For men of this age, the share living in their parents' home increased from 13 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2012. The increase for women age 25 to 34 went from 8 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2012.
• According to the 2011 American Community Survey, there were 605,000 same-sex couple households, including both married and unmarried couples, of whom 284,000 were male and 321,000 were female couples.
• Most family groups with children (63 percent) were maintained by married couples.
• A higher percentage of black (55 percent) and Hispanic (31 percent) children lived with one parent than white non-Hispanic (21 percent) or Asian children (13 percent).
• Between 1970 and 2012, the average number of people per household declined from 3.1 to 2.6. 

Note: A version of this article first appeared at The Weekly Standard.