There were 53.0 million households in the United States in 1960, or about 11 million more than in 1950. This increase was equal to about one-fourth of the total number of households at the beginning of the decade. The change in the household definition (see page 2 and 3) probably did not account for more than about 3 to 5 percent of this increase.

Reflecting, among other things, the migrations from one region to another during the decade, the increase in the number of households varied quite sharply by regions, ranging from 20.7 percent in the North Central States to 41.6 in the West. The growth rate of the number of' households in urban areas (35.5 percent) was far above that in rural areas (4.1 percent). The increase in the number of households was greater for the nonwhite population (32.6 percent) than for the white population (24.3 percent).

Partly because of the relatively high birth rate that prevailed throughout the decade, and partly because of the decline in the average number of adult members per household, children under 18 years of age comprised a substantially larger proportion of the household members in 1960 than they did in 1950--34.2 percent compared with 29.1 percent.

Heads and wives combined constituted about the same proportion of the total population in households at the beginning and end of the decade, the proportion increasing only slightly from 52.2 to 52.9 percent. Relatives of the head other than children and wives, however, dropped from 15.8 to 11.2 percent of the population living in households.

The table shown here is a reproduction of table 62 which was published in Final Report PC(1)-1B).

The PDF to the right contains the 4-page report.