New Census Report Reveals Growing Number Of Childless Older Adults

Childlessness is something the U.S. Census Bureau has never bothered to explore––until now. Those of us who have a keen interest in solo aging (adults over 55 with no children and those aging alone for other reasons) have been aware for many years of the rise in childlessness among boomers. The reverberations of this rise in childlessness will have far-reaching implications for the health and wellbeing of the aging boomers.

Is childlessness a Problem?

For the generations prior to the baby boomers, the average rate of childlessness hovered around 10%. That statistic mostly reflects the rate at which couples were infertile, for one reason or another. Nothing about infertility caused a problem for anyone other than the couples who desperately wished they could bear children. It didn’t pose a problem for society, because most people lived in close proximity to relatives at that time and if a childless woman or man managed to live long enough to need assistance, familial support was rarely far away.  

Today’s reality is, of course, quite different. People are leading much longer lives and their chances of needing help and care later in life are much greater than for those who lived during a time when a heart attack or stroke was almost always fatal, cancer treatment was less effective, and less was known about the cause and treatment of diseases like diabetes and COPD. In short, people simply died younger. My father, for example, died 30+ years ago at age 75 from a post-surgical complication that is correctable today. Medical science, better knowledge of nutrition an healthier lifestyles are keeping a significant number of people alive much longer, but there are repercussions to that. the biggest being that as a country we are going to be woefully short of family caregivers.

When Did Parenthood Become Optional?

Compounding the issue over a shortage of caregivers is the rise in childlessness over the past three generations. It started with the boomers. You might call the rise in childlessness among boomer women the result of a perfect storm in the waves of change that were taking place in the late sixties and throughout the seventies and eighties. 

Prior to that era, there was little acknowledged resistance to the traditional roles for women: they married, had children, and if there was time or financial need, they might also be teachers, nurses, or secretaries. That scenario blew up for good, starting in the late 60s with the equal-rights-for-women initiative. That led to a political movement to push the equal rights amendment (ERA) through congress, and pass an increasing number of laws that prohibited discrimination against women in any institution that drew on government funding, mainly universities and large corporations. Soon, the doors of prestigious educational institutions that trained doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, and scientists were opening wide and inviting women (albeit, often grudgingly) to apply. Subsequently, hiring managers were compelled to bring on the products of those schools and women found themselves being ushered into what had previously been almost exclusively the domain of their male counterparts. 

With all of the new opportunities within their grasp, a very large number of women decided motherhood (and sometimes marriage as well), were not going to be part of their future. In addition to new occupational opportunities, these women of child-bearing age in the 1970s and 1980s also had a brand new weapon in their arsenal, one their mothers and grandmothers did not possess: THE PILL. For the first time in history, women could take complete control of their reproductive systems. Those who chose to avoid motherhood could still have an active sex life if they chose and not run the risk of ending up in the family way, by accident. 

Fast forward to the 2020s, and those women (boomers) who decided not to bear children are now in their late 50s, 60s and 70s. Plus, they have male counterparts, who also determined, alone or with their partner, that they would not have children. Today, they are in lots of different relationships and financial circumstances. The U.S. Census Bureau, partially supported by the National Institute on Aging, just (August 2021) issued a groundbreaking report on the childless, older adult population, which includes boomers and those a bit older. Here are some of their findings: 

•  Among adults 75 years and older (not boomers), 10.9% reported being childless; among those ages 65-74 (early boomers) 15.9% reported being childless; and among those 55-64 (late boomers), 19.6% reported being childless.
• Childless adults as a group were more educated than parents. About 38.4% have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 30.0% of parents. At the lowest education level, 34.5% of childless adults have a high school degree or less, compared to 43.3% of parents. Additionally, a greater share of childless adults 55 years and older were in the labor force, 43.7% compared to 40.1% of parents.
• Among childless adults ages 55 and older, 85.2% were White alone; 79.0% were non-Hispanic White; 9.2% were Black alone; 3.4% were Asian alone; 2.2% were all other races or reported multiple races; and 6.5% were Hispanic (of any race).
• About 22.1 million adults 55 years and older reported living alone, among whom 6.1 million were childless. This means that 27.7% of older adults who lived alone were childless. Childlessness was more common among older men living alone than among older women; 34.3% of older men and 23.6% of older women living alone were childless.
• Living alone is more common among older adults who were childless than their counterparts who were parents. About 62.5% of parents 55 years and older lived with a spouse, compared to 40.2% of childless older adults.
• Poverty rates are higher among childless older adults than they are among older parents. About 12.4% of childless adults had family incomes below the poverty line. Among parents, a greater share of mothers had family incomes below the poverty line (10.5%) than fathers (7.5%).

It is important to note that for this study, the operational definition of “childless” is people who reported no biological children, while “parents” were defined as those who reported having biological children. Therefore, those who adopted and raised children are still counted as childless and those who bore children that they didn’t raise are considered parents.