Almost one-third of Sacramento's children don't live with two married parents, double the rate from 1970, new census figures show.
Back in 1950, about one in 13 of the region's children didn't live with married parents. By 1970, it was one in six. Last year, it was about one in three - 175,000 children.
The trend is largely explained by rising divorce rates. Also, a growing number of young couples live together and have children outside marriage.
Recent increases in poverty may play a role, too; women in poverty-stricken areas are more likely to have unintended pregnancies.
About 40 percent of children living outside "traditional" households also live below the poverty line, compared to 12 percent of children in married-couple households, census figures show. About three-quarters of children outside "traditional" families live in a household headed by a woman, mostly single mothers.
In parts of south Sacramento and Oak Park, most children in 2013 didn't live with two married parents. By comparison, barely a tenth of children growing up in Granite Bay or El Dorado Hills didn't live with two married parents.
This chart and map show the trend and distribution of children in the Sacramento region not living with two married parents.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau via Minnesota Population Center
Notes: The Sacramento metropolitan region (MSA) is El Dorado, Placer, Yolo and Sacramento counties. Its Census Bureau definition has changed during the years shown in the bar chart above. In 1950, only Sacramento County was part of the MSA; Placer and Yolo counties were added in the early 1960s and El Dorado County was added in the early 1980s. Before they were added to the region by the census bureau, Yolo, Placer and El Dorado counties were mostly rural and represented less than a fourth of the region's population.