According to a recent Pew study, a rising percentage of adults in the U.S. are living without a spouse or partner. But U.S. social policy still tends to value families over individuals – reflected in the structure of everything from our tax codes to social security and workplace benefits. As a result, according to the same Pew study, unpartnered adults generally have worse economic and social status outcomes than those who are married or cohabiting. In a story for The Goods by Vox, culture writer and author Anne Helen Petersen asks “what would it look like to create small systems of care for one another that go beyond one other individual?” Petersen joins us to consider that question and talk about the escalating costs of being single in the U.S.
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