The Growing Power of Single Women
The rise in single women translates into greater political power and more
“In the near future, American politics, both national and local, may turn on the degree to which people remain single, and also whether they decide to have children.”
That declaration appeared in an article by Joel Kotkin and Samuel J. Abrams, The Rise of the Single Woke (and Young, Democratic) Female, published in RealClear and picked up by a number of other media outlets. The “woke” label was not meant as a compliment, and the article is pocked with nods to culture-war obsessions (drag queens, definitions of gender that are not just biological, those women in higher education with their feminist ideologies and how they are hurting men, etc., etc.). And yet, perhaps in spite of themselves, the authors do make a strong case for the rising power of single women.
Demographic Power
I have been keeping track of Census Bureau data for years, and the evidence for the increase in single people (not just women) and people who live alone (a subset of single people) is quite compelling. Kotkin and Abrams focus specifically on the growing numbers of women who stay single and the decreasing numbers of women who are married or married with children. (They are interested in the rise of…