年研究人员了解到单身‘狗’的这些事
Demographically, single people are more powerful than ever before.
从人口统计学方面看，单身群体比以往任何时候都强大。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，人口普查局报道：美国未结婚的成年人人数创历史新高。1.1亿以上的居民要么离婚、要么丧偶、要么就一直都是单身的状态；这一比例占美国18岁及以上人群的45%以上。结婚的年龄也比以往更晚。首次结婚的平均年龄为29.5岁（男性）和27.4岁（女性）。（这一趋势可能会持续下去：几年前，皮尤研究中心的一份报告预测：当现在的年轻人活到50岁的时候，约四分之一的人会一直保持单身状态。）
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.
一个人住也越来越受欢迎。今年夏天，加拿大新闻界开始喋喋不休的传出这样一个消息：一个人住比合住的人更多，这是该国有史以来第一次发生这种情况。在美国，今年不和丈夫/妻子或者另一半同居的人高达42%，而10年前这一数据是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.
像独居这样的个人主义不止存在于西方--全球都有这种情况。在分析全世界78个国家半个世纪的数据时，心理学研究员亨利·C.桑托斯和他的同事发现：相关数据表明，个人主义的受欢迎程度在各国已显著增长了83%。个人主义信仰，比如朋友比家人重要，也一直处于上升阶段，50年来显著增长了79%。Marriage is no longer considered a key part of adulthood.
人们已不再认为婚姻是一个人成年的关键部分。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.
半个世纪前，美国人认为不结婚就不是真正的成年人。现在再也不是这般情况了。2017年人口普查局表示，超过一半的全国代表参与者（55%）说：结婚不是衡量一个人是不是成年人的重要标准。
