Lingering bad times may alter expectations and lifestyles for years to come, some demographers say. "It's going to have a long-term impact and to say it's going to end is optimistic," says Cheryl Russell, former editor in chief of American Demographics, now editorial director of New Strategist Publications, publisher of reference tools. "I'm more pessimistic that this is the new normal." The Census Bureau's 2010 American Community Survey sent detailed annual questionnaires to 4.4 million people and was conducted separately from the 2010 Census. What could become the new normal:
•Marrying later. The median age of first marriage has crept up to 28.7 for men and 26.7 for women, up from 27.5 and 25.9 respectively in 2006. At the same time, fewer people are taking a trip to the altar, period. If the marriage rate had stayed the same as in 2006, there would have been about 4 million more married people in 2010.
•Fewer babies. There were 200,000 fewer births to women ages 20 to 34 in 2010 than just two years before even though the number of women in this prime age for having children grew by more than 1 million, according to Kenneth Johnson, demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute. "The recession is the likely cause," Johnson says. "Economic recessions often reduce fertility because women delay … in uncertain times."
•Breaking up is harder to do. Divorces, which have been sliding for 25 years as people wait longer or choose to live together before tying the knot, continue to drop. There were about 65,000 fewer divorces in 2010 than in 2008, a 7% drop. "Part of that is the long-term trend, but I'm convinced that some couples are delaying divorce because they can't afford to set up separate houses," says Stephanie Coontz, co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a non-partisan association of family researchers.
•Crowded living.
