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Manhattan is Borough with Most Single Households

By DNAinfo Staff on October 30, 2009 8:59am

A man and a woman share a bench along the Hudson River, new census data finds that a majority of Manhattan residents live alone.
A man and a woman share a bench along the Hudson River, new census data finds that a majority of Manhattan residents live alone.
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Ed Yourdon

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — New York may be the city that never sleeps but a recent U.S. Census Report reveals when it finally heads to bed it does so alone — more than half of Manhattan residents are single.

More than 50 percent of households have just one person living in them, a record figure that continues to rise, according to the New York Post.

Factors including the lure of well-paying jobs, the high cost of raising a family and an aging population of widows and widowers all foster a single-friendly culture, William Helmreich, deputy chairman of City College's Sociology Department told the Post.

"Singles attract more singles," Helmreich said in an interview with the paper. "They participate in a lifestyle that is mutually reinforcing. The more single people engage in that lifestyle, the more acceptable it is, and the more acceptable it is, the more people are going to do it."

The odds of finding love in the city favor men, who are outnumbered by single-women households 212,000 to 165,000, according to the Post.

While some of the women in the report are looking for love, many of them are elderly and live by themselves following the death of a partner, said Richard Alba, sociology professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, told the paper.

In the notoriously difficult New York real estate market the single life has economic pull, with tiny rentals appealing to residents without a need for larger space.

"The biggest evidence of that trend, the biggest proof, is that it's easiest to rent a studio or small one-bedroom," said Stu Greenberg, owner of Fireside Realty, to the Post. "Those are far and away the most popular apartments we rent."