Single In Illinois? Here’s Why You Should Be Happy About It

If you happen to be single, this is supposed to be encouraging. If you're married, and reading this spurs you toward being single, please just leave me out of it. I don't want any troubles with angry spouses.

If you live in my house, and wear a wedding ring, just skip this whole thing. Seriously. Go ahead. Move along. Nothing more to see here. Don't want to start the weekend with my wife wondering what fun she's missing out on by not being single.

Personal Finance Website WalletHub Compared All 50 States To See Which Places Are The Best For Single Adults

Having been crazily, happily married for more than half my life, I guess I didn't realize, or really stop to think how much of our population in this country is single. CSMonitor.com reports that nearly half the adult population is single. That's about 128 million Americans.

In 2020, nearly 4 out of 10 adults between ages 25 and 54 were neither married nor living with a partner – a 30% increase since 1990, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. More significantly, the number of single-person households in the U.S. has doubled from 18.2 million in 1980 to 36.1 million today, or about 28% of the nation’s total, according to census figures. An additional 11 million homes are headed by a single parent, triple the number in 1965.

Illinois Is Not The Number One State For Singles, But Hey, We Made The Top 10

WalletHub.com made their determinations by comparing all the states across 30 key indicators of dating-friendliness, from the share of single adults to online-dating opportunities to restaurants per capita. Before we get to Illinois' numbers, here are the states that WalletHub says are the 5 most single-friendly:

1. California
2. New York
3. Florida
4. Texas
5. Pennsylvania

As for our state of Illinois, we take the #6 spot on the list.

Dating in Illinois (1=Best; 25=Avg.):

• 14^th – % of Single Adults
• 6^th – Gender Balance of Singles
• 23^rd – Online-Dating Opportunities
• 15^th – Mobile-Dating Opportunities
• 6^th – Median Annual Household Income (Adjusted for Cost of Living)
• 5^th – Restaurants per Capita
• 13^th – Movie Theaters per Capita
• 21^st – Crime Rate
• 19^th – Percentage of Residents 12+ Who Are Fully Vaccinated