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Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

seattletimes.com

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Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#41

Post by trollbridge »

georgeburdell wrote: post #4

I do want to point out that never-married by looking at legal paperwork is a blunt instrument. There are reasons, especially for dual high earners, to not get a marriage license. Examples of tax-related things that don’t double when married; -Income tax brackets above about $200k -SALT cap -Mortgage interest deduction -HSA contributions (if have children) -Dependent care FSA contributions

Yep. I’d be eligible for more government benefits and pay lower taxes if I weren’t married. It would also be easier to set up various aspects of a business such as officers, etc since we would not be considered “related”.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#42

Post by delecti »

toshinoriyagi wrote: post #18
georgeburdell wrote: post #4

I do want to point out that never-married by looking at legal paperwork is a blunt instrument. There are reasons, especially for dual high earners, to not get a marriage license. Examples of tax-related things that don’t double when married; -Income tax brackets above about $200k -SALT cap -Mortgage interest deduction -HSA contributions (if have children) -Dependent care FSA contributions

Isn't this all solved by just filing separately, not jointly?

Married filed separately effectively locks you out of a lot of benefits when compared to unmarried filing single, or married filing jointly.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#43

Post by garciasn »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #25

Anecdotally, among the people I know in Seattle, many people who have happily been in the same relationship for decades are not married. People are not avoiding long-term relationships, they are avoiding the baggage and fairly rigid assumptions that comes with state intervention in their relationships. There is zero social pressure to be “officially” married so people have no reason to do it for the sake of social co…

As someone who was married and is now divorced, I can absolutely see the draw. I don’t think of it as “state intervention in relationships,” as I’m not a libertarian, but aside from tax breaks, which mean absolutely nothing when I have to pay for my ex-wife to live carefree for the rest of her life simply because we were married and she was lazy, doesn’t offset the 19 years of tax offsets she squandered.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#45

Post by BowBun »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #25

Anecdotally, among the people I know in Seattle, many people who have happily been in the same relationship for decades are not married. People are not avoiding long-term relationships, they are avoiding the baggage and fairly rigid assumptions that comes with state intervention in their relationships. There is zero social pressure to be “officially” married so people have no reason to do it for the sake of social co…

Agreed with this point. Folks are moving away from traditional relationship structures, and have been for a while.

If you want a personal anecdote - I'm partnered, not married, we don't plan to have kids or marry, and worry pretty much 0 about retirement or having enough funds to pass on to another generation. We're just enjoying our lives for however long that may be.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#46

Post by ghaff »

spicyusername wrote: post #36
Aurornis wrote: post #16

My anecdote: We had offices in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle and Portland) at a previous company. A lot of young people worked in those offices. It was basically a rite of passage for them to move just outside of Seattle around the time they were getting married. This was so widely understood that it factored into decisions about where to locate office buildings and influences remote and hybrid policy. If you wanted…

I mean, people who get married typically plan to have children next. At a minimum they tend to stop participating in many urban activities, night life, etc. Having children in an urban area is more expensive and the schools tend to be worse. I don't think this is a uniquely Seattle phenomenon. It's pretty common to emigrate from the city center to the suburbs when planning to start a family or otherwise "settle down"…

The finance people from my cohort from grad school moved to Manhattan and thereabouts to a large degree. 10 years later? I know one couple who still live there I think.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#49

Post by delichon »

My brother was a never-married single in Seattle, and it was the cause of his death at the start of the pandemic. He was terminally lonely and without purpose and suicided. But he was a tremendously loyal person. If he was able to make a connection and form a family, he would have been full of purpose. Instead he lived quietly in a small house in a quiet neighborhood, and after he died none of his neighbors could even recognize his photo. He lived within a community but never reached out to it, and nobody ever reached in. Socially he might as well have been living in a cave on a remote island. He was a free proton in an atomized society. Aka an acid. I blame society, my brother, myself, and probably you too if I can figure out how.

Re: Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

#50

Post by pfdietz »

inglor_cz wrote: post #31
pfdietz wrote: post #21

Patrick Boyle has looked at causes of decline in the total fertility rate around the world and concluded reduction in the formation of couples (married or not) is a major cause. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ispyUPqqL1c

See also "The Global Collapse of Coupling and Fertility" https://www.ggd.world/p/the-global-collapse-of-coupling-and I wonder if the ultimate cost (in lives never born) of technologies like smartphones and Tinder will be. If a significant part of the entire youth cohort never learns to interact with the other sex in the real world, we might be looking at a pandemics of loneliness - and at subsequent global birth defi…

I've come to a conclusion that the solution may be somewhat radical.

If coupling is reduced, it should become the norm for women to have and raise children alone, or at least without a male partner. This increases the burden on women, so at the same time the number of children they must support would have to decrease.

This could be achieved technologically, by filtering sperm to remove Y chromosome carrying gametes. As a result, the female/male ratio of newborns would dramatically increase. At the US TFR of 1.66, a 2:1 female to male ratio would be more than enough to maintain the population. Even higher ratios could be imagined, leading to an almost entirely female population.

Social engineering to reach this state is left as an exercise to the science fiction writer.

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