How Many Married Couples in the US, Share of Households

Key points

Married couples headed about 78% of US households in 1950. By 2023 the share had fallen to about 47%, the figure in the chart’s title.
The steepest fall on the chart came between the late 1960s and the early 1980s.
Married-couple households dropped below half of all households around 2010. Census data put the share at 50.0% in 2008 and 49.7% in 2010 [2].
Nonfamily households, mostly people living alone or with unrelated people, grew from about 11% of households in 1950 to about 36% in 2023 [2].
The number of married-couple households still rose, from 34.1 million in 1950 to 62.2 million in 2023. All households grew faster [2].

The married household share chart in text

Title: The Modern Family, Married Household Share Slip to 47% in the U.S. The vertical axis is share of total households, from 0% to 80%, and the horizontal axis runs from 1950 to 2023. Nonfamily households form the bottom area of the chart, from about 11% in 1950 to about 36% in 2023. Other family households sit on top of them, growing from about 11 points to about 17 points of the total. The combined line for the two rises from about 22% to about 53%. A separate line for married-couple households falls from about 78% in 1950 to about 47% in 2023, crossing the 50% gridline around 2009 to 2010. Labels: Married Couples Households, Other Family Households, Nonfamily Households. Footer: Source, U.S. Census Bureau. Research and visualization by Ehsan Soltani, www.econovis.net, @econovisuals.

The chart prints only the 47% figure in its title. The other values above are read from the plot and are approximate.

How many married couples in the US, by Census data

The chart’s source is the US Census Bureau. Its historical table HH-1, Households by Type, gives the counts behind the shares [2]. The table below shows selected years. The shares are our calculation from the Census counts.

Year	All households (millions)	Married-couple households (millions)	Married-couple share	Other family share	Nonfamily share
1950	43.6	34.1	78.2%	10.9%	10.8%
1960	52.8	39.3	74.3%	10.7%	15.0%
1970	63.4	44.7	70.5%	10.6%	18.8%
1980	80.8	49.1	60.8%	12.9%	26.3%
1990	93.3	52.3	56.0%	14.8%	29.2%
2000	104.7	55.3	52.8%	16.0%	31.2%
2010	117.5	58.4	49.7%	17.4%	32.9%
2020	128.5	62.3	48.5%	16.6%	34.9%
2023	131.4	62.2	47.3%	16.9%	35.8%
2025	134.8	62.8	46.6%	17.1%	36.2%

The Census counts confirm the chart. The married-couple share was 78.2% in 1950 and 47.3% in 2023 [2]. It has kept edging down since then, to 46.6% in 2025, when the Census counted 62.8 million married-couple households out of 134.8 million [2].

What the household types mean

The Census Bureau defines a family as two or more people, one of them the householder, related by birth, marriage or adoption and living together. A family household is one maintained by a householder who is in a family. A nonfamily household is a householder living alone or sharing the home only with people to whom they are not related [3]. The householder is the person in whose name the home is owned or rented [3].

A married-couple household is one maintained by a husband and wife. The Census notes that the total number of married couples is larger than the number of married-couple households, because it also counts married-couple subfamilies, couples living in someone else’s home [3]. The HH-1 table splits family households into married couples and other families, which are headed by a man or a woman with no spouse present [2].

The shift on the chart is mainly a move from married-couple households to nonfamily households. Other family households grew more slowly, from 10.9% of households in 1950 to 16.9% in 2023 [2].

Notes on this infographic

The word “Connecticut” appears in orange text over the end of the Nonfamily Households label. Nothing else on the chart refers to a state, so it looks like a label left over from another chart. The data are for the whole US.
The title reads “Married Household Share Slip to 47%”. Grammatically it should be “Slips”. The Econovis post uses “Decline to 47%” in its subtitle [1].
The chart measures households, not people. A married couple living in someone else’s household, or a married person living apart from their spouse, is not counted as a married-couple household. So the chart does not show the share of Americans who are married.
Households are classed by the relationship of the other members to the householder, the person who owns or rents the home [3].

Questions about married couples in the US

How many married couples are there in the US?

The Census Bureau counted 62.8 million married-couple households in 2025, up from 62.2 million in 2023 [2]. This counts households headed by a married couple. It does not include married couples living in another person’s household, which the Census counts as subfamilies [3].

What percentage of US households are married couples?

About 47%. Census data give 47.3% for 2023 and 46.6% for 2025, down from 78.2% in 1950 [2]. The share has been below half since about 2010.

When did married couples become less than half of US households?

Around 2010. Census data put the married-couple share of US households at 50.0% in 2008 and 49.7% in 2010 [2], and the chart's line crosses the 50% gridline around 2009 to 2010. The share has kept falling since then, to 47.3% in 2023 and 46.6% in 2025 [2].

What is a nonfamily household?

A nonfamily household is a householder living alone or sharing the home only with people to whom they are not related, according to the US Census Bureau [3]. On shares calculated from Census counts, these households grew from 10.8% of US households in 1950 to 35.8% in 2023 and 36.2% in 2025 [2]. The chart shows this as the main shift away from married-couple households.