By Elisabeth Anderson
Happy Valentine’s Day, Brooklyn. We wanted to get you roses, but the logistics are proving a challenge. So instead, we present you with our earnest gift of affection: facts and stats about relationships in the borough you call home. We know, “Valentine’s Day” and “statistics” is an odd pair. But indulge us and enjoy these truffle-size bites of demographic wisdom.
With Love, The Ink.
Mad men
There are 413,261 married men in Brooklyn. That’s 44.6% of the borough’s adult male population.
All the single ladies
In contrast to the men, there are only 395,633 married women in Brooklyn, or a scant 36.7%.
Not your national average 
Brooklyn’s marriage rates, for both women and men, fall considerably below the national averages. While 52.3% of American men and 48.4% of American women are married, those figures drop to the stated 44.6% and 36.7%, respectively, in Brooklyn.
Two-faced 
The Brooklyn neighborhood with both the most single people and the most married people is Bensonhurst. Their 45,169 married people constitute 14% of the borough’s entire population of marrieds. In second place is Sheepshead Bay (23,797), followed by Borough Park (21,019) and Williamsburg (13,670).
First comes love, then comes marriage (maybe)
There are more cohabiters in Greenpoint, 1,678, than in any other Brooklyn neighborhood. That’s a full 7% of the borough’s 23,464 cohabiters. On the opposite extreme, there are just 35 cohabiters in Coney Island.
Then comes the baby in the baby carriage
More women had babies in Brooklyn between 2005 and 2009, an average of 35,777 a year, than in any other borough. That’s about 6,000 more each year than in second-place Queens.
Mommyhood and marriage don’t align
Their highest-in-the-borough’s birth rate aside, Brooklyn’s women do not boast the city’s highest marriage rate. That distinction belongs to Queens, where 422,827 women are married; Brooklyn comes in second with 395,633. The stats are the same for married men; the most are in Queens, followed by Brooklyn.
Untying the knot
The percentage of married Brooklynites is decreasing. Between 2000-2004, 39.7% of the borough’s women were married, and 48.3% of the men. Between 2005-2009, those rates slid to 36.7% and 44.6%, respectively.
It’s divorce, of course 
Divorce rates are up in Brooklyn. There were 137,285 divorcees in the borough five years ago; that number is now 145,208. Today, 5.5% of Brooklyn’s adult men are divorced, as are 8.7% of the women.
Cooling off 
A modest number of Brooklyn residents are in trial separations – 2.9% of the men and 5% of the women.
Departed partners 
Just 2.8% of Brooklyn’s men are widowed, compared to a full 10.2% of its women. This is a significant increase from five years ago, when just 6.1% of women were widows.
Single parents 
Nearly 11 percent of Brooklyn households are occupied by single mothers. Only 1.9% are households led by single fathers.
Peace and quiet 
More than 260,000 adults in Brooklyn live alone. That’s 29.5% of households in the borough. After Bensonhurst, the most bachelor and bachelorette pads are in Bedford-Stuyvesant (17,967), Sheepshead Bay (13,692), and East Flatbush (11,866).
No peace, no quiet 
Yes, there are a lot of kids in Park Slope (9,330). But the neighborhood’s got nothing on Bensonhurst, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Borough Park – with 81,105, 54,263, and 54,072 children, respectively. One out of every ten kids in Brooklyn lives in Bensonhurst.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, American FactFinder: http://factfinder.census.gov, Infoshare Online, http://infoshare.org
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