Research suggests that, compared to married people, Americans who have always been single are more likely to support and stay in touch with their family and are more likely to help, encourage, and socialize with friends and neighbors.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Time Use Survey, single Americans spend on average 12 minutes a day staying in touch with other people by calling, emailing, or mailing them. Married people spend on average 7.8 minutes a day keeping in touch.
Klinenberg explains that, despite extraordinary external pressure that can lead to self-doubt, being single doesn't condemn someone to a life of feeling lonely or isolated.
"On the contrary, the evidence suggests that people who live alone compensate by becoming more socially active than those who live with others, and that cities with high numbers of singletons enjoy a thriving public culture," he writes.
Klinenberg also believes that, in the age of expanding digital media and growing connectedness, being single offers a clear advantage: more restorative solitude.
More alone time helps people discover who they are and what gives their life meaning and purpose, he explains.
"Living alone helps us pursue sacred modern values — individual freedom, personal control, and self-realization — whose significance endures from adolescence to our final days," Klinenberg writes.
Whether conducted in solitude or with other people, singles tend to spend more time on overall leisure activities than married people.
According to the BLS, single people spend on average 5.56 hours a day on overall leisure activities, compared to married people, who spend an average 4.87 hours a day on leisure.
Broken down even further, single people spend on average about 3 minutes more a day participating in sports, exercise, and recreation than married people, about 16 minutes more a day watching TV, and about 15 minutes more a day playing games and on leisurely computer use.
As Your Money editor Libby Kane points out, marrying someone makes you legally responsible for their financial missteps, whether that means assuming equal responsibility for their debt ("You owe how much in student-loan debt?!") or becoming a part of lawsuits filed against them.
A recent study conducted by W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and Robert Lerman, an economics professor at American University, suggests that women see bigger salaries when they're single compared to their married counterparts.
While the study authors did not consider these findings statistically significant, single women between 28 and 30 years old earn $1,349 more per year in individual income compared to their married counterparts. And single women between 44 and 46 years old make $1,465 more than married women of the same age range.
The same study authors also found that single men between 28 and 30 work 441 fewer hours outside the home per year than do their married peers, while men between 44 and 46 work 403 fewer hours if they are single.
Various studies point to the effect your single status can have on your health.
Researchers from the University of Maryland found that men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 who had never been married tended to exercise more each week than those who were either married or divorced.
Another study found that single men were 25% less likely to be overweight or obese compared to married men.
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