SALT LAKE CITY — Societies around the world, including the U.S., are struggling to answer a question that could have widespread implications for future generations: What happens when a country whose laws, tax structures and other institutions were built around the idea of the family being an integral unit of society finds itself with more single people than there is an infrastructure to support them?

Increasingly, Americans — and those in other developed nations including Japan, Sweden and Singapore — are remaining single, whether by choice or circumstance. In the U.S., 22 percent of American adults were single in 1950. Today, that number is 50 percent. Additionally, 4 million people lived alone in 1950, or 10 percent of households. More than 32 million people — 28 percent of households — live alone today.

Researchers are divided on whether the shift presents a challenge that must be overcome or an opportunity to mold a country to fit its people. In a Deseret News analysis, Eric Schulzke found that while researchers may disagree on how to approach the situation, there is widespread agreement that the change has to be addressed if future generations are going to be able to sustain themselves.

Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, sees the change as a positive one, and argues for a societal model that would make single living easier on those experiencing it.

Deseret News:

Single for life? The social costs of fewer families

In the U.S., those living alone are now "tied with childless couples as the most prominent residential type," according to Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University.

"What if, instead of indulging the social reformer's fantasy that we would all be better off together," Klinenberg writes in "Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, "we accepted the fact that living alone is a fundamental feature of modern societies and we simply did more to shield those who go solo from the main hazards of the condition?"

For some researchers, the shift toward forever singledom paints a worrying portrait of a society in which the aging generation does not have the support of a younger population to provide needed care. But some worry the demands of modern society itself are contributing to the problem: greater demands on the time and energy of singles means less time for families; in effect, the "demand threatens it's own supply," Phillip Longman argued in 2004.

Some do not see the shift as inevitable, though. Schulzke spoke with Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and director of the National Marriage Project who believes instead of changing societal expectations to fit the needs of singles, countries need to focus on showing potential parents the importance of families.

"But it's not just about incentives," Wilcox said. "We are talking at a much more fundamental level about what is the worldview, what is the narrative, the stories, the institutions — and do they paint a positive and powerful portrait of parenting?"

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