年研究人員瞭解到單身‘狗’的這些事
Demographically, single people are more powerful than ever before.
從人口統計學方面看，單身羣體比以往任何時候都強大。In 2017, the Census Bureau reported that a record number of adults in the U.S. were not married. More than 110 million residents were divorced or widowed or had always been single; that's more than 45 percent of all Americans aged 18 or older. And people who did marry were taking longer than ever to get there. The median age of first marriage rose to 29.5 for men; for women, it reached 27.4. (These trends are likely to continue: A report from the Pew Research Center a few years ago predicted that by the time today's young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have been single all their life.)
2017年，人口普查局報道：美國未結婚的成年人人數創歷史新高。1.1億以上的居民要麼離婚、要麼喪偶、要麼就一直都是單身的狀態；這一比例佔美國18歲及以上人羣的45%以上。結婚的年齡也比以往更晚。首次結婚的平均年齡爲29.5歲（男性）和27.4歲（女性）。（這一趨勢可能會持續下去：幾年前，皮尤研究中心的一份報告預測：當現在的年輕人活到50歲的時候，約四分之一的人會一直保持單身狀態。）
Living alone is also becoming more popular. This summer, the Canadian press was abuzz with the news that for the first time in the nation's history, more people were living in one-person households than in any other arrangement. In the U.S., the number of people living without a spouse or partner rose to 42 percent this year, up from 39 percent a decade ago.
一個人住也越來越受歡迎。今年夏天，加拿大新聞界開始喋喋不休的傳出這樣一個消息：一個人住比合住的人更多，這是該國有史以來第一次發生這種情況。在美國，今年不和丈夫/妻子或者另一半同居的人高達42%，而10年前這一數據是39%。
Individualistic practices like living alone aren't just Western phenomena - they've gone global. In analyses of a half-century of data (1960-2011) from 78 nations around the world, psychology researcher Henri C. Santos and his colleagues found that the popularity of such practices grew significantly for 83 percent of the countries with relevant data. Individualistic beliefs, like valuing friends more than family, have also been on the rise, increasing significantly for 79 percent of the nations across the five decades.
像獨居這樣的個人主義不止存在於西方--全球都有這種情況。在分析全世界78個國家半個世紀的數據時，心理學研究員亨利·C.桑托斯和他的同事發現：相關數據表明，個人主義的受歡迎程度在各國已顯著增長了83%。個人主義信仰，比如朋友比家人重要，也一直處於上升階段，50年來顯著增長了79%。Marriage is no longer considered a key part of adulthood.
人們已不再認爲婚姻是一個人成年的關鍵部分。A half-century ago, Americans who had not yet married wouldn't be considered real adults. That's no longer the case. According to a 2017 Census Bureau report, more than half of the participants in a nationally representative sample (55 percent) said that getting married was not an important criterion for becoming an adult.
半個世紀前，美國人認爲不結婚就不是真正的成年人。現在再也不是這般情況了。2017年人口普查局表示，超過一半的全國代表參與者（55%）說：結婚不是衡量一個人是不是成年人的重要標準。
