For the first time since the Census Bureau began tracking family information in 1940, the percentage of married households has fallen below 50 percent.

CNSNews.com is reporting that the disappointing numbers were released in a Census Bureau brief on Wednesday. Based on the results of the 2010 census, the percentage of married households fell to 48.4 in 2010, down from 55.2 percent in 1990 and 51.7 percent in 2000.

“The 48 percent of husband-and-wife households in 2010 was the first time since at least 1940 that this has fallen below 50 percent,” said Daphne Lofquist, Statistician for the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch for the Census Bureau.

As CNS reports, the Census Bureau did not start keeping detailed statistics about the marital status of householders until 1940.

Most of the other household categories saw an increase. Households headed by females jumped from 11.6 percent in 1990 to 13.1 percent in 2010. Households headed by men increased from 3.4 percent in 1990 to five percent in 2010. Two or more people in non-family households jumped from 5.2 percent in 1990 to 6.8 percent in 2010 and one-person households rose from 24.6 percent in 2990 to 26.7 percent in 2010.

The Census Bureau also re-released data on same-sex households first issued last fall, indicating the total number of same-sex unmarried partner households to be 0.6 percent of the population — 646,464 out of the total 116,716,292 households. The Bureau originally reported this number as 901,997 but later cited a “data capturing error” and revised it downward.

In another sign of changing trends in American homelife, the report found that the number of seniors over the age of 65 living in a household jumped from 23 percent in 2000 to 25 percent in 2010, while the percent of families with a child 18 years old or younger declined from 36 percent to 33 percent.

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