The Widowed Who Live Alone: An Examination of Social and Demographic Factors

In the last decade considerable research has been done on various aspects of the contracting American family. The trend from the larger kin group to the nuclear family has been widely discussed. A logical development in the examination of this trend is the exploration of the last stage of the family cycle: widowhood. Since residence and composition of households are two of the keys to an examination of the social structure of the family, this study is based on data from the one-in-a-thousand sample of the 1960 United States Census (Bureau of the Census, 1964). This sample yielded data on 9,875 widowed persons with a variety of living arrangements during their widowhood. Variables examined were age, race, sex, educational achievement, income, labor force status, ethnicity, place of residence, fertility and marriage, all of which have a bearing on the living arrangements of the widowed.