Vol. II, No. 8, November 2002
AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS WITH CHILDREN
First for the bad news. Only 33 percent of US households include children under age 18, down from 47 percent in 1950. The Cleavers of the "Leave it to Beaver" television show are no longer in the majority. In fact, married-couples with children now only represent 24 percent of all households. The other 9 percent are single-parent families.
Now the good news. The number of children in the US has increased since 1950, the heart of the post-war baby boom, from 47.1 million to 72.3 million in 2000. The number of younger children, 0-9, has also increased from 29.7 million in 1950 to 39.7 million in 2000. This increase is projected to continue.
In next month's Leisure eNewsletter, we will be discussing how to capture this significant demographic group of young children with edutainment.
If you are interested in seeing how the population of the US has grown since 1950 and is projected to continue to grow until 2050 in each of the 5-year age segments, click here
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Estephan/Animation/pyramid.html
If you watch, you'll see the original baby boomers and their aging, the echo baby boom and their aging and how the echo baby boomers are now producing their crop of children. It is also interesting to watch the projected population growth and growth of the number of children until 2050.
