Percentage of State's 'Traditional' Households Falling, Census Finds

By KEVIN RODERICK

May 11, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Barely half of California’s households are now occupied by traditional married couples as single-parent families and other non-traditional living arrangements continue to become more common, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

In its first report on what the 1990 count learned about the lifestyles of California’s 29.7 million people--more than one-tenth of all Americans--the Census Bureau found that the shares of renters and young children increased in the past decade.

It also discovered that, for the first time since 1950, there are more California males than females. The same is true in Orange County, where males outnumbered females by 50.4% to 49.6%, the newly released report found. In the 1980 census, females outnumbered males by a slight margin.

The report offered only a glimpse of the billions of lifestyle tidbits gathered by survey takers, but it did hint at a state with a far different family and home life than the rest of the nation.

The census found that only 52.7% of California households included a married couple. More than 2.1 million Californians are divorced, and another 612,000 were separated when the census was taken April 1, 1990, according to a computer analysis of the census data. More than 1.1 million women are widowed.

The number of married couples in Orange County--56.2%-- was notably higher than the state figure, but represents a 3% decrease from the previous census.

California’s 10.3 million households were lumped into three main groups--those with families where at least two related people live, those where unrelated people live together, and homes where the resident lives alone.

In all, 7.1 million households are home to some form of family, although the traditional nuclear unit of married parents and children is undergoing revision. The share of these family households headed by a single person rose to 23.3% in the decade, compared to 19.8% in the previous census.

Orange County also experienced an increase in the share of single-family households--from 12.3% to 16.2%.

More than 1.1 million family households in California are headed by a woman with no spouse at home, and another 477,692 families are headed by a man with no spouse at home.

California added 1.7 million households over the last decade, but only 636,960 of the new households were established by married couples.

Another 811,000 households in California include people living together where no one is related, a varied group that includes unmarried couples and friends who are roommates.

The census also found that more than 2.4 million Californians live alone, including 818,520 who are age 65 or older. One-quarter of all Californians 65 or older live alone.

Further details on California family life were not released in the report, but are contained on more complete computer tapes that officials began to distribute Thursday.

National summaries of the lifestyle information will not be released for at least a month, census officials say. But a separate sampling of Americans, released by the Census Bureau last year, found that California households are less likely than the nation as a whole to contain traditional families.

Californians are also less likely to live alone, suggesting a willingness to try more-customized arrangements, according to the Current Population Survey taken in March, 1990, said Bob Grimes of the Census Bureau.

Population experts said the lifestyle numbers bear the strong stamp of California’s millions of foreign immigrants, who have arrived at an annual pace estimated at 250,000 in recent years. Because immigrants tend to be young and family-oriented, California’s population is younger than the rest of the nation.

The California median age, while climbing, is about two years younger than the national midpoint because of the relative youth of foreign immigrants, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

About 10.3 million, or more than one-third of all Californians, are between the ages of 25 and 44, the demographic niche filled by offspring of the postwar baby boom. As they moved up the age ladder by a decade, California’s median age was shoved upward in this census so that half of all residents are older than 31 1/2 and half are younger.

The slice of the population that is under 18 years old shrank slightly during the 1980 decade. But last year’s tally found 2.4 million children under age 5, about 8.1% of the entire state population. It was the first time since 1960 that the share of youngsters under age 5 rose.

The change to men outnumbering women was slight, but unlike the other findings it took the experts by surprise.

“It had us buzzing around here,” said Linda Gage of the Demographic Research Unit of the state Department of Finance.

Females have outnumbered males in California since 1950, and in the United States since 1940, mainly because women tend to outlive men. But the change may reflect California’s rising birth rate--more baby boys are born than girls--and the likelihood that foreign immigrants tend to be young men, Gage said.

The report also charted the remarkable rise in the cost of homes through the 1980s. Ten years ago, more than 1 million California homes were priced under $100,000. Last year, about 755,000 homes were valued under $100,000, based on estimates made by the resident who filled out the census questionnaire. At the high end, a decade ago the Census Bureau found 275,000 homes valued at more than $200,000, the highest price category the census recognized then. This time the census counted 2.2 million homes valued at more than $200,000--including 1.1 million homes higher than $300,000, the revised cutoff.

The median home value last year, based on residents’ estimates, more than doubled from 1980 to $195,500.

“There is no state anywhere close to a median of $195,000,” Levy said.

In Orange County, the median price of a home was, however, substantially higher--$252,700 in 1990 compared to $108,100 in the previous decade. Nearly three-fourths of homes in the county--72.5%--were valued at more than $200,000. In the previous census, only 9% were valued over that amount.

Not that renters have it any easier. The median rent also doubled in the decade, to $561. In Orange County, the median rent soared to $728 from $336.

Instead of 1.3 million apartments and other housing going for under $250 a month, as in 1980, there were only 330,000 at that price last year.

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Census Snapshot Here is a look at some numbers for the state of California from the 1990 census: POPULATION

A total of 29,760,021, up from 23,667,902 a decade ago.

Male: 14,897,627

Female: 14,862,394

AGE

The median is 31.5 years, up from 29.9 a decade ago.

Under 18 years: 7,750,725 or 26% of the state’s population

From 18 to 24: 3,412,257 or 11.5% of the state’s population

From 25 to 44: 10,325,692 or 34.7% of the state’s population