The data on marital status were obtained from answers to question P7 on the Advance Census Report.
In the 1960 Census, as in the 1950 Census, data on marital status were obtained from persons 14 years old and over largely because economic data were to be presented for persons in that age group. In 19H0, most of the data on marital status were shown for persons 15 years old and over. In earlier censuses data on marital status were tabulated only for persons 15 years old and over.

The marital status classification refers to the marital status of the person at the time of the enumeration.


Single persons are those who have never married or whose only marriage has been annulled. Persons ever married are those in the categories married (including separated), widowed, and divorced.
Married persons are those who reported themselves as married, whether or not the person's spouse was living in the same household, and include persons who were living in common-law marriages. Persons classified as married, spouse present, are married persons whose spouse was living in the same household, even though he or she may have been temporarily absent on business or vacation, or in a hospital, at the time of the enumeration. Presence of spouse was ascertained by examining entries for household relationship, marital status, and related information, for members of the household. Persons married, spouse absent are married persons whose spouse did not live in the same household. Such persons are further classified as separated or other married, spouse absent, as defined below. The small number of persons living with, their spouse in group quarters are classified as married, spouse absent; if a married person in group quarters was in the sample, his spouse was unlikely to be in the sample, because in. group quarters the sample consisted of every "nth" person in order of enumeration.

The number of married couples is, by definition, identical to the number of married men with wife present.

Separated persons are those with legal separations, those living apart with intentions of obtaining a divorce, and other persons permanently or temporarily estranged from their spouse because of marital discord. Persons with a limited divorce were also classified as separated. Persons classified as other married, spouse absent, include married persons working and living for several months at a considerable distance from their homes, those whose spouse was absent in the Armed Forces or in an institution, in-migrants whose spouse remained in another area, and all other married persons (except those reported as separated) whose place of residence was not the same as that of their spouse.

Widowed persons are those whose spouse had died and who were not remarried at the time of the enumeration. Divorced persons are those who had been, legally divorced and were not remarried at the time of the enumeration.

Differences between the number of married men and the number of married women are due partly to the absence of husbands or wives from the country at the time of enumeration. Examples are women whose husbands were in the Armed Forces overseas and immigrants whose husbands or wives were still abroad. Differences may also arise because the husband and wife have different places of residence, because of differences in the completeness and accuracy of reporting on marital status for men and women, and because of the methods used to inflate the sample cases. The number of married men with wife present shown in this report should, by definition, be identical with the number of married women with husband present. However, the figures may not be exactly the same because, in the weighting of the sample, husbands and their wives were sometimes given different weights.

The data on whether married more than once and date of first marriage were obtained from answers to the following questions on the Household Questionnaire:


These data were obtained for all ever-married persons in the 25-percent sample, that is, for all persons reported as married, widowed, divorced, or separated at the time of the enumeration. Persons who had been married only once were asked when they were first married, and those who had been married more than once were asked when they were married for the first time. The number of years since the person's first marriage, shown in table 2, was derived by subtracting the date of first marriage from April 1, 1960, and represents the number of completed years since first marriage.

In using these statistics, it should be kept in mind that they refer to marital status as of the time of the enumeration. For instance, the number of widowed persons does not include persons who have remarried and are living with their second husband or wife; these persons are classified according to their current marital status. Nonetheless, in the absence of data based on a longitudinal study, of identical persons covering their lifetime experience, analyses of lifetime changes in characteristics may be made from cross-sectional data such as these. The figures are of value, also, for studying differences between social and economic groups with respect to the likelihood of marriage, separation, divorce, widowhood, and remarriage.

Because changes in marital status may be selective of certain types of persons, the persons in a marital status class at the time of the enumeration may not be representative of all persons who have entered that class at some time in the past. Thus, if rich widows have a higher probability of remarriage than poor ones, the income distribution of women who are still widows at the time of the enumeration will tend to be lower than the income distribution for all women who have ever been widowed, including those who have remarried.

In addition, it should be kept in mind that the statistics refer to the population enumerated at its usual place of residence. For Instance, a married woman whose husband is living away from home because of membership in the Armed Forces would have been assigned the marital status classification "married, spouse absent" because, according to the rules by which the population was assigned a usual place of residence, her husband would have been counted at his military installation rather than at her home.

The Quality of the Data on marital status may be judged from information on nonresponse rates and from comparison of the marital status reported by identical persons in the census and in the Current Population Survey. In addition, some information is available on the marital status reported by persons who were divorced immediately before the census.

The arithmetic mean is that measure of central tendency which represents the sum of values divided by the number of values. Mean earnings shown in table 7 is the amount obtained by dividing the total earnings of a group by the number of earners in that group. These amounts are expressed to the nearest dollar.

The median is presented in connection with the data on age, Years of School Completed, income, and the difference between age of husband and age of wife. It is the value which divides the distribution into two equal parts, one-half the cases falling below this value and one-half the cases exceeding this value.

A plus (+) or minus (-) sign after the median indicates that the median is above or below that number. For example, a median of "$10,000+" for income indicates that the median fell in the interval $10,000 or core. For information on computation of median difference between age of husband and age of wife see discussion of that subject below.

In general, the urban population comprises all persons living in Urbanized Areas and in places of 2,500 inhabitants or more outside Urbanized Areas. More specifically, according to the definition adopted for use in the 1960 Census, the urban population comprises all persons living in (a) places of 2,500 inhabitants or more incorporated as cities, boroughs, villages, and towns (except towns in New England, New York, and Wisconsin) ; (b) the densely settled urban fringe, whether incorporated or unincorporated, of Urbanized Areas; (c) towns in New England and townships in New Jersey and Pennsylvania which contain no incorporated municipalities as subdivisions and have either 25,000 inhabitants or more or a population of 2,500 to 25,000 and a density of 1,500 persons or more per square mile; (d). counties in States other than the New England States, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania that have no incorporated municipalities within their boundaries and have a density of 1,500 persons or more per square mile; and (e) unincorporated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more. The population not classified as urban constitutes the rural population.

The rural population is subdivided into the rural-farm population, which comprises all rural residents living on farms, and the rural-nonfarm population, which comprises the remaining rural population. In the 1960 Census, the farm population consists of persons living in rural territory on places of 10 or more acres from which sales of farm products amounted to $50 or more in 1959 or on places of less than 10 acres from which sales of farm products amounted to $250 or more in 1959. All persons living in group quarters are classified as nonfarm except the relatively few living in workers' quarters (including quarters for migratory agricultural workers) that are located on a farm or ranch.

An Urbanized Area contains at least one city of 50,000 inhabitants or more in 1960 and the surrounding closely settled incorporated places and unincorporated areas that meet certain criteria relating to population density or land use. An Urbanized Area may be thought of as divided into the central city, or cities, and the remainder of the area, or the urban fringe. All persons residing in an Urbanized Area are included in the urban population.

The age classification is based on the age of the person in completed years as of April 1, 1960, as determined from the reply to a question on month and year of birth.

The difference between age of husband and age of wife was obtained by subtraction of the age of the wife from the age of the husband, and represents the interval in completed years. A negative value indicates that the wife is older than the husband and a value of zero indicates that both are the same age.

The medians shown in table G take into account the approximate nature of some of the derived intervals. Subtraction of one age (in completed years) from another age (also in completed years) produces differences that are subject to errors of plus or minus one year. For example, a computed difference of "2 years" may reflect a true value of anywhere from 1.0 years to 3.0 years. Similarly, a computed difference of "3 years" may reflect a true value of anywhere from 2.0 to 4.0 years. Thus, the range of true values overlaps from one completed Interval to another. If the overlapping parts are assumed to be compensatory in nature, then the data are the equivalent of independent Intervals that begin and end one-half year on either side of the computed differences, or 1.5 to 2.5 years for the computed "2 years" difference and 2.5 to U.5 years for the computed "3 to 4 years" difference.

Outer limits for the open-end intervals were set after inspection of distributions based on vital statistics records.

Table G. Class Intervals for Calculation of Median Difference between Age of Husband
and Age of Wife

Interval as shown in table 9	Interval for calculation of median
Husband older:
10 years or more	9.5 to 24.5
5 to 9 years	4.5 to 9.5
3 to 4 years	2.5 to 4.5
2 years	1.5 to 2.5
1 year	0.5 to 1.5
Same age or husband 1 year younger	-1.5 to 0.5
Husband 2 or more years younger	-4.5 to -1.5

Age at first marriage was derived by subtraction of the person's birthdate from his date of first marriage and is expressed in completed years.

The term "color" refers to the division of population into two groups, white and nonwhite. The color group designated as "nonwhite" consists of such races as the Negro, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Hawaiian, Asian Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Malayan races. Persons of Mexican birth or ancestry who are not definitely of Indian or other non-white race are classified as white.

The data on Years of School Completed were derived from the answers to the two questions: (a) "What is the highest grade (or year) of regular school he has ever attended?" and (b) "Did he finish this grade (or year)?" Enumerators were instructed to obtain the approximate equivalent grade in the American school system for persons whose highest grade of attendance was in a foreign school system, whose highest level of attendance was in an ungraded school, whose highest level of schooling was measured by "readers," or whose training by a tutor was regarded as qualifying under the "regular" school definition, Persons were to answer "No" to the second question if they were attending school, had completed only part of a grade before they dropped out, or failed to pass the last grade attended.

The number in each category of highest grade of school completed represents the combination of (a) persons who reported that they had attended the indicated grade and finished it, and (b) those who had attended the next higher grade but had not finished it.

The data on Employment Status relate to the calendar week prior to the date on which the respondents filled their Household Questionnaires or were interviewed by enumerators. This week is not the same for all respondents because not all persons were enumerated during the same week.

Employed persons comprise all civilians 14 years old and over who were either (a) "at work"-those who did any work for pay or profit, or worked without pay for 15 hours or more on a family farm or in a family business; or (b) were "with a job but not at work" - those who did not work and were not looking for work but had a job or business from which they were temporarily absent because of bad weather, industrial dispute, vacation, illness, or other personal reasons.

Persons are classified as unemployed if they were 14 years old and over and not "at work" bat looking for work. A person is considered as looking for work not only if he actually tried to find work but also if he had made such efforts recently (i.e., within the past 60 days) and was awaiting the results of these efforts. Persons waiting to be called back to a job from which they had been laid off or furloughed are also counted as unemployed.

The "civilian labor force" includes all persons classified as employed or unemployed, as described above. The "labor force" also includes members of the Armed Forces (persons on active duty with the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast guard).

Persons "not In the labor force" .comprise all those 14 years old and over who are not classified as members of the labor force, including persons doing only incidental unpaid family work less than 15 hours during the week.

The data on occupation in this report are for employed persons and refer to the job held during the week for which Employment Status was reported. For persons employed at two or more jobs, the data refer to the job at which the person worked the greatest number of hours. The occupation statistics presented here are based on the detailed systems developed for the 1960 Census; see 1960 Census, of Population, Classified Index of Occupations and Industries, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1960.

Information on income for the calendar year 1959 was requested from all persons 14-years old and over in the sample. The unqualified term "income" refers to the sum of amounts reported separately for wage or salary income, self-employment income, and other income. Wage or salary income is defined as the total money earnings received for work performed as an employee. It represents the amount received before deductions for personal income taxes, Social Security, bond purchases, union dues, etc. Self-employment income is defined as net money income (gross receipts minus operating expenses) from a business, farm, or professional enterprise in which the person was engaged on his own account. Earnings are the sum of wage or salary and self-employment income. Other Income Includes money income received from such sources as net rents, interest, dividends, Social Security benefits, pensions, veterans' payments, unemployment insurance, and public assistance or other governmental payments, and periodic receipts from insurance policies or annuities. Not included as income are money received from the sale of property (unless the recipient was engaged in the business of selling such property), the value of income "in kind," withdrawals of bank deposits, money borrowed, tax refunds, and gifts and lump-sum inheritances or insurance payments.