A key aspect of the suddenly trendy “affordability” issue is that young adults are being priced out housing market. The statistics seem convincing. According to the National Association of Realtors, “Today’s young adults continue to face delays in homeownership compared to previous generations at the same age. Not only is the homeownership rate lower for people under 35 compared to previous generations, but the share of first-time buyers is lower and the age of first-time buyers is older than historically.”
The most obvious approach to helping Gen Zers buy homes is to reduce costs by increasing the available supply. Certainly, this supply-side solution has its place. But there’s something else to think about: marriage.
It is no coincidence that high housing costs coincide with another socio-economic trend: low marriage rates. According to the Institute of Family Studies, “Today, only about 60% of 35-year-old men have ever been married, down from 90% in 1980.” And “only 20% of 25-year-old women and 23% of 25-year-old men have ever been married today. This is close to the lowest levels ever observed for marriage rates.”
The decline in marriages has several important consequences for housing costs.
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One way to overcome the affordability crisis is the most traditional way: marriage. (iStock)
The most obvious, of course, is the fact that two incomes are better than one when it comes to saving for a down payment and… pay monthly mortgage payments. The affordability that comes from pooling incomes – and ambitions – reflects a faded assumption about marriage.
Brad Wilcox of the Institute of Family Studies calls it a “cornerstone marriage”: the idea of starting poor and working together to improve a shared destiny. He distinguishes between that and “keystone marriage”: getting married once one (or two) have become wealthy enough to be able to afford a destination wedding and a house. In other words, it’s not just the number of marriages that has fallen, but also the idea of the role of marriage.
Then there’s the less obvious but crucial side effect of a low marriage rate: the establishment of more small, often single-person households creates a need for more housing for which young adults must compete if supply lags. This is not a marginal demographic change. Marriage rates among young adults have fallen sharply over time, meaning fewer couples, more singles, and therefore more households competing for limited units.
On this point, the census data is clear. The average household size has steadily declined, from 3.3 people per household in 1960 to just 2.4 in 2024. At the same time, the number of total households has steadily increased, from 117 million in 2010 to 132 million in 2024. This increase is out of proportion to the increase in population, as measured by the number of households per million Americans, which rose from 380,744 to 390,171. That same figure rose from 295,090 in 1960.
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This increase is also caused by the fact that more and more people live alone. Between 2010 and 2024, the number of one-person households increased from 31 million to 38 million, while the number of three-person households hardly increased, from 18 million to 19 million. Even that figure may not reflect the increase in the number of married couples with a child; Many Gen Z members live with their parents into their 30s. In 1960, only 11% of men and 7% of women between the ages of 25 and 34 lived with their parents, while in 2022, 19% of men and 12% of women lived with their parents.
It should come as no surprise that Americans would face a crisis epidemic of loneliness: many of us are literally home alone.
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The increase in the number of single-person households reflects more than declining marriage ratesNaturally. Women live longer than men and therefore older women often live alone. Men aged 75 and over are almost twice as likely (67%) as women (35%) to live with a partner. The government’s housing policy exacerbates the problem. Public housing authorities give priority to people with the lowest incomes for social housing or housing vouchers. Inevitably they turn out to be single mothers with children or older women without wives. Only 3% of households with public or subsidized housing consist of two adults with children.
However, it stands to reason that marriage can alleviate the housing affordability problem in two ways: by pooling incomes and by reducing the demand for independent households. Two heads are better than one, and in other words, one bed is better than two.
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