The average American family in 2023 consisted of 3.15 persons. Families in the United States According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a family is a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together; all such people (including related subfamily members) are considered as members of one family. As of 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau counted about 84.33 million families in the United States. The average family consisted of 3.15 persons in 2021, down from 3.7 in the 1960s. This is reflected in the decrease of children in family households overall. In 1970, about 56 percent of all family households had children under the age of 18 living in the household. This percentage declined to about 40 percent in 2020. The average size of a family household varies greatly from state to state. The largest average families can be found in Utah, California, and Hawaii, while the smallest families can be found in Wisconsin, Vermont and Maine.

Graph and download economic data for Total Households (TTLHH) from 1940 to 2024 about household survey, households, and USA.

The 1940 Census Public Use Microdata Sample Project was assembled through a collaborative effort between the United States Bureau of the Census and the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin. The collection contains a stratified 1-percent sample of households, with separate records for each household, for each "sample line" respondent, and for each person in the household. These records were encoded from microfilm copies of original handwritten enumeration schedules from the 1940 Census of Population. Geographic identification of the location of the sampled households includes Census regions and divisions, states (except Alaska and Hawaii), standard metropolitan areas (SMAs), and state economic areas (SEAs). Accompanying the data collection is a codebook that includes an abstract, descriptions of sample design, processing procedures and file structure, a data dictionary (record layout), category code lists, and a glossary. Also included is a procedural history of the 1940 Census. Each of the 20 subsamples contains three record types: household, sample line, and person. Household variables describe the location and condition of the household. The sample line records contain variables describing demographic characteristics such as nativity, marital status, number of children, veteran status, wage deductions for Social Security, and occupation. Person records also contain variables describing demographic characteristics including nativity, marital status, family membership, education, employment status, income, and occupation.

United States - Total Households was 132216.00000 Thous. in January of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Total Households reached a record high of 132216.00000 in January of 2024 and a record low of 34949.00000 in January of 1940. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Total Households - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on September of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Real Median Family Income in the United States (MEFAINUSA672N) from 1953 to 2023 about family, median, income, real, and USA.

Researchers use microdata to study the economic development of the United States and the causal effects of historical policies. Much of this research focuses on county- and state-level patterns and policies because comprehensive sub-county data is not consistently available. We describe a new method that geocodes and standardizes the towns and cities of residence for individuals and households in decennial census microdata from 1790--1940. We release public crosswalks linking individuals and households to consistently-defined place names, longitude-latitude pairs, counties, and states. Our method dramatically increases the number of individuals and households assigned to a sub-county location relative to standard publicly available data: we geocode an average of 83% of the individuals and households in 1790--1940 census microdata, compared to 23% in widely-used crosswalks. In years with individual-level microdata (1850--1940), our average match rate is 94% relative to 33% in widely-used crosswalks. To illustrate the value of our crosswalks, we measure place-level population growth across the United States between 1870 and 1940 at a sub-county level, confirming predictions of Zipf's Law and Gibrat's Law for large cities but rejecting similar predictions for small towns. We describe how our approach can be used to accurately geocode other historical datasets.

In 2009, consumers in the United States spent some 5.3 percent of their disposable income on food at home. By 2024 that share had slightly decreased to just over five percent. For food away from home, on the other hand, the share of disposable income spent by U.S. consumers grew from just under 4.4 percent in 2009 to nearly six percent as of 2024.

In the United States, the expansion of communication technology in the 20th century transformed everyday life for American citizens. The patent for the telephone was granted in 1876, and by the end of the century there were over a million units operational across the country. Radio technology was also developed in the late 19th century, but its commercial application was not in effect until the 1920s - however, as radio transmissions were wireless they required less infrastructural investment, and more individual households owned a radio in the 1930s than the total number of telephones in use across the country.

It was not until after the Second World War that TV ownership became widespread in the U.S., and it was the most quickly-adopted of the three major technologies, with ownership reaching a similar level to radio ownership by the 1960s. In 1962, there were 53 million households in the U.S., 50 million owned a radio, while 46 million owned a TV.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country would have throughout their reproductive years. In the United Kingdom in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have five children over the course of their lifetime. Over the next 35 years the fertility rate was quite sporadic, rising to over 5.5 in the 1810s and 1820s, then dropping to 4.9 by 1835. This was during and after the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 with the US, which was a time of increased industrialization, economic depression and high unemployment after the war. As things became more stable, and the 'Pax Britannica' (a period of relative, international peace and economic prosperity for the British Empire) came into full effect, the fertility rate plateaued until 1880, before dropping gradually until the First World War. The fertility rate then jumped from 2.6 to 3.1 children per woman between 1915 and 1920, as many men returned from the war. It then resumed it's previous trajectory in the interwar years, before increasing yet again after the war (albeit, for a much longer time than after WWI), in what is known as the 'Baby Boom'. Like the US, the Baby Boom lasted until around 1980, where it then fell to 1.7 children per woman, and it has remained around this number (between 1.66 and 1.87) since then.

Over the course of the 20th century, the number of operational motor vehicles in the United States grew significantly, from just 8,000 automobiles in the year 1900 to more than 183 million private and commercial vehicles in the late 1980s. Generally, the number of vehicles increased in each year, with the most notable exceptions during the Great Depression and Second World War.