Volume 12, No.3, April 2001

Household Structure and Living Arrangements of Children, 2000

The 90s brought many changes to Missouri's families.  Many of these changes reflect the aging of the population as baby boomers enter their fifties and become "empty nesters". One change has been a decline in the proportion of family households and family households with own children under age 18. Family households now comprise less than two-thirds of all households. Family households with children under age 18 are now less than a third of all households.

According to new census data, 67.3 percent of all households are family households. This is down from 70.3 percent in 1990.

In 1990, 47.9 percent of all family households had children under 18. By 2000 this had dropped to 47.4 percent.

Another important change has been the continued increase in households headed by a single parent. In 1990, 78.2 percent of all families with children under 18 were married couples. This had declined to 71.1 by 2000.

The percent of family households with children that are single parents grew from 21.7 percent in 1990 to 28.9 percent in 2000. Even more dramatic has been the increase in households headed by single fathers. While the majority of single parent households (77.3%) continue to be headed by mothers, the number headed by males has almost doubled increasing by 93 percent. Single males now account for 22.7 percent of single parents numbering 46,007.

Single parent households for the most part are concentrated in the metro central cities and the Bootheel with a few exceptions. St. Louis City, Jackson County (Kansas City), Buchanan County (St. Joseph), five counties in the Bootheel, Randolph County (Moberly), Butler County (Poplar Bluff), Saline County (Marshall), and St. Francois and Iron counties in the south central part of the state all report excess of 30 percent of family households headed by a single parent. In St. Louis City, 57.4 percent of all family households are headed by single parents. However, it is also the case that St. Louis City has one of the lowest percentages (25.4%) of all households that are family households with children.

Other counties with small percentages of all households with children include Adair County (Kirksville), and retirement counties such as Hickory, Benton, Camden, and Stone.

Living Arrangements of Children

Data released by the Bureau of the Census on June 27, 2001 also provide information regarding where children are living and with whom. The proportion of children living in single parent homes has continued to increase along with the increase in such families discussed earlier. Listed on page 6 are some of the major findings from initial analyses.

• Of the 1,427,692 children under age 18, the overwhelming majority reside in private households (99.6%). The remaining 6,258 reside in group quarters.

• A very small minority (0.1%) are themselves either the householder or spouse.

• The majority of all children (97.3%) live with either their parents or other relatives.

• About 30,000 live with nonrelatives (2.1%).

• And, by 2000, almost one of every four children lived in a single parent home compared to less than one of five in 1990. Twenty-four percent of all children were in one parent homes in 2000 up from 19.5 percent in 1990. The number of children in male-headed families jumped from 40,517 to 72,199 now accounting for five percent of children in single parent homes.

Definitions

Own children in a family are sons and daughters, including stepchildren and adopted children, of the householder.

Family. A family is a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together.

Family household. A family household is a household maintained by a householder who is in a family (as defined above), and includes any unrelated people who may be residing there. The number of family households is equal to the number of families.

Map 1

Map 2

Table 1

View this issue in Adobe Acrobat Format (518KB)