Census: Household sharing up in recession

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WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- The growth in household sharing between 2007 and 2011 appears to have been driven by tough economic times, the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday.

The bureau reported there were 22 million shared households in 2010, up 11.4 percent. In 2007, 17 percent of all households were shared, which increased to 18.7 percent in 2010.

Shared households are defined as those with an unrelated adult who is not in school and not married or sexually involved with the householder.

"Although reasons for household sharing are not discernible from the survey, our analysis suggests that adults and families coped with challenging economic circumstances over the course of the recession by joining households or combining households with other individuals or families," said Laryssa Mykyta, an analyst in the Census Bureau's Poverty Statistics Branch.