A Pulitzer-Prize worthy story by Sean Salai of the Washington Times crunches all the numbers on a clear and present danger to our economy, our traditional family structure, and the nation’s happiness. We believe it’s a bigger threat to our national well-being than our national debt, climate change, cancer, or even the education crisis.

Here are the key findings, and you can assess how worrisome these trends are:

• Roughly twice as many men ages 18 to 39 were unmarried as married in 2025.
• 30.4 million single men in 2025, up 47% from 20.7 million in 2000.

• In the same period, the number of married men dropped by 15%, from 18.1 million to 15.4 million. “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy”

• 42% of working-class men are married today, down from 73% in 1980.
• American women have grown choosier about marriage partners and are more prone to raising children alone.
• “Women have less structural need for marriage than past generations did,” said Angelica Gianchandani, a New York University finance instructor. “Rising income and education give many women a financial independence marriage once provided, and donor sperm and fertility treatment have decoupled motherhood from a partner altogether.”
• According to the latest Census Bureau data, 47% of households were headed by married couples last year, down from 78.8% in 1949.

If anyone can spot a silver lining in these sobering statistics, we’d love to hear it.