Is Housing an Issue for Older Adults with No Children? What about Hunger?

A new report compares older adults who don’t have children with those who do

Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash

The Census Bureau just released their first-ever report on older people in the U.S. who do not have biological children. For those of us interested in single people, the report is relevant because 7 out of 10 older adults who have never married do not have any biological children. It is also important because single people with no kids are too often missing from policy discussions and legal protections, which so often focus on family instead, so this new attention is welcome.

For my “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today, I summarized what the report had to say about how older people with no biological children compare to biological parents in marital status, living arrangements, health, disability, wealth, poverty, and education. Some of the findings were quite striking — for example, the older women with no biological children had fewer disabilities, better health, and more wealth than all the other groups — biological mothers, biological fathers, and men with no biological children.

Although the women with no biological kids had the greatest net worth, the older people without biological children, including both the men and the women, were more likely to have incomes that fall below the poverty line. The authors reconcile those findings by suggesting that there are subgroups of people with no children, including some who are doing quite well financially and others who are struggling.

Here I want to share a few other findings from the report, about how older adults with and without biological children compare in the quality of their housing and their neighborhoods, and in their food insecurity and the help they are getting in dealing with that. As you will see, older people with no biological children are more likely than biological fathers to have problems with housing, their neighborhoods, and with going hungry, but they typically do not differ much from biological mothers in those matters.

Quality of Housing and Neighborhoods

Problems with the quality of housing

People who lived in a place with cracks, holes, pests, or plumbing problems were classified as having problems with the quality of their housing. One group stood out from the others: biological fathers were less likely to report problems with the quality of their housing than any of the other groups.

Percent reporting low housing quality

Lowest to highest:

14.5 percent: biological fathers

16.2 percent: biological mothers

17.2 percent: men with no biological children

17.9 percent: women with no biological children

Problems with the quality of the neighborhood

Survey participants were also asked if they had any problems with the quality of their neighborhood. Those could include “feeling unsafe, staying home, saying that traffic or street noise is a problem, or saying that trash is a problem.” The authors did not report the specific percentages of people in each group who had problems with the quality of their neighborhood. They only said that “fathers are less likely than mothers or childless women to report a problem with their neighborhood.” I think that means that biological fathers were also less likely than men without biological children to report a problem with their neighborhood, but the difference was probably not statistically significant.

Why is this happening?

The authors offered no explanation as to why fathers are less likely to report a problem with their neighborhood than anyone else. They only have this to say about why fathers are less likely to report problems with the place where they live: “This is likely an outcome of their higher rates of homeownership, which may give them more control to fix issues as they arise.” (Previously, I reviewed what we know about home buying among single women, single men, unmarried couples, and married couples. I also described the results of my own studies documenting a bias against single people in the housing market.)

I think financial resources are relevant, too. As I showed in my other review of this new Census report, fathers are less likely to be living in poverty than people in any of the other groups. They also have a very high net worth, surpassed only by women with no biological children, and even then, the difference is not statistically significant. Their greater financial resources probably make it easier for them to buy a house, as the authors note. But even if they don’t buy a place, their financial resources probably also allow them to rent a place that is less likely to have problems, in a neighborhood that also has fewer problems.

When it comes to reporting problems with the neighborhood, I wonder whether another factor may be relevant. Remember that these are people ranging in age from 55 on up. Many of the oldest participants grew up at a time when gender roles were more rigid than they are now. Disproportionate numbers of the married men may have been accustomed to going off to work and leaving all the neighborhood concerns to their wives who stayed home. If street noise was a problem or if trash was a problem, they may not have even noticed. They would not be likely to report “staying home” as a problem, either; they went to work.

Who Is Going Hungry? Who Is Getting Help with Getting Food?

Food insecurity

People were categorized as “food insecure” if they “reported that it was ‘often’ or ‘sometimes true’ that the food they bought did not last or that they could not afford balanced meals, or that they ever cut the size of their meals or skipped meals because there wasn’t enough money for food,” as of 2017. Again, it was the biological fathers who were the least likely to be going hungry. The women with no biological children were a little more likely to be food insecure, but not significantly so.

Percent experiencing food insecurity

Lowest to highest:

10.0 percent: biological fathers

11.5 percent: women with no biological children

12.1 percent: men with no biological children

12.5 percent: biological mothers

Nutritional assistance

The survey covered just one kind of help in getting the food that was needed — getting benefits from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The results closely track the findings for food insecurity. The people who were least likely to be going hungry, the biological fathers, were also least likely to be receiving nutritional assistance.

Percent receiving nutritional assistance

Lowest to highest:

5.1 percent: biological fathers

7.8 percent: women with no biological children

7.9 percent: men with no biological children

8.4 percent: biological mothers

Back in December, I wrote about data showing that during the pandemic, food insecurity has been a bigger problem for singles than for married people, yet they have been getting less help. At the end of that post, I shared Ellen Worthing’s inspiring story of how she noticed that problem and did something about it.

A Key Concern of the Census Report: Vulnerabilities of Older People Who Live Alone

The conclusion of the Census report on older Americans with no biological children includes this:

“Changing demographic patterns, such as the aging of the population and increases in childlessness, alongside a growing trend of older people living alone, raise new questions about the experiences of older childless Americans as they navigate their later years, and whether they will have the support they may need in their later years.”

Sensitivity to these issues is welcome. Previously, I described a whole series of changes that need to be made now that so many people are living alone. They include more affordable housing and innovative living arrangements, housing that meets the needs of more people, improvements to everyday services, more accessible healthcare, better packaging of products, pricing that is less unfair to people who do not buy huge amounts of food, and changes to the hospitality and travel industries. I also noted that we should not think of living alone only in terms of vulnerabilities; for many people, getting to live alone is a triumph, and being able to continue living alone well into old age is something worth celebrating.

I also think we can do more than just bemoan the absence of biological children or romantic partners in the lives of many older persons. We can also recognize, empower, and protect the people who are important to those of us who do not have a spouse or children. For example, policies such as medical leave, family leave, and bereavement leave should include close friends, so it is just as possible for us to show up for our friends when they need us, and for them to show up for us, as it is for a married person to be there for their spouse.

[Want to learn more? Take a look at this collection of articles on all sorts of topics relevant to single life. Watch my TEDX talk, “What no one ever told you about people who are single.” Check out my website. Find my other stories on Medium here. Finally, this post was adapted from a column originally published at Unmarried Equality (UE), with the organization’s permission. The opinions expressed are my own. For links to previous UE columns, click here.]