The changing American juror: Does it matter if that juror is single or married?

Originally published by Rita Handrich .

We’ve known for a while that the proportion of American adults who are married is decreasing but in mid-September, 2014 there was a flurry of media coverage over economist Edward Yardeni’s report (titled “Selfies”) that the majority of Americans are now unmarried (he calls that “remarkable”) and believes they are driving economic changes. Unfortunately, his report is behind a paywall and we cannot access it but thanks to Bloomberg, we know some of what he had to say (and much of it appears to be drawn from publicly accessible statistics from the US Census Bureau).

In short, in 1976, 37% of Americans were single and now, in 2014, more than half of Americans are single. Yardeni thinks this changing demographic will result in fewer of us having children and in fewer of us owning homes.

The numbers support his conclusion: Young singles, in particular, are more likely to rent than own.

Never-married singles are less likely to have children and (now divorced and single) older adults are unlikely to have young kids. Yardeni thinks this will have an effect on how much money they spend and what they buy since they have fewer expenses than married people with children.

The percentage of never-married singles in 1976 was 22.1% and now it is 30.4%. (The proportion that are single by divorce, separation, or death of a spouse increased to 19.8% from the 1976 level of 15.3%).

It’s an intriguing set of information, but it is hardly news. In the past ten years, just as we’ve watched political affiliations of our mock jurors shift dramatically, we’ve also been watching the marital status of our jurors shift. While we used to consistently have a majority of jurors report they were married, now we often have a majority who are either never married or have been married previously but are no longer married. It’s another short-hand that has changed for us.

We used to think of our married mock jurors as “connected” to others. Now, we look for other signs of connectedness. Are they in a relationship? Are they involved in community groups or activities? Do they volunteer?

Just as union membership (in many areas of the country) has declined as a short-hand way to assess politics and SES, we can no longer rely on political affiliation or marital status to use as short-cuts to categorize our mock jurors. It is sometimes frustrating as we struggle to understand research results but it is also reassuring to see that change happens and to know that eventually we will wrap our brains around it and have a new short-cut defined–just in time for a new shift to occur.

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Related posts:

1. Religion, ethnicity and Asian-American’s voting patterns


2. Are you a White American? How Black is your network?


3. “70% of Americans see immigration as threat to American way of life”

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