Households led by single men are rarer than single-mother households, but becoming less rare. Single-dad households made up 4.9 percent of all U.S. households in 2019, a 13 percent increase from 2010, according to a Social Explorer analysis of newly released 2015-19 American Community Survey data.

Much of the growth in single-father households was found in places with a predominantly male workforce, such as the oil patch. The percentage of single-father households grew 1,075 percent, to 47 households, in Haakon County, S.D., site of major staging work for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Edmunds County, S.D., in the Williston Basin, posted a 700 percent gain. And Glasscock County, Texas, on the edge of the oil-rich Permian Basin, reported a 550 percent increase in single-father households. Check out the change in the percentage of single-dad households in your county during the last decade with Social Explorer’s easy-to-use online mapping tools.

Single-Father Households,2010-19. Click here to explore further.

Author: Frank Bass