NBC, Touchstone Television and their partners should be proud– it has been 22 years since the final episode aired, yet the influence of The Golden Girls means that every year reporters ask about the boom in “Golden Girls Housing .” This form of shared housing receives a great amount of attention, but we'll miss the big picture if we look for big numbers. For the last few years, I have looked at data from the Current Population Survey (analyzed by the AARP Public Policy Institute ) to count households that are all female (or all male) with at least one non-related housemate or roommate, no spouses, and no one under 50 in the home. This is the classic “Golden Girls” formula. The result has become familiar: a very small portion of the population lives in a “golden” situation, around one percent. The small numbers of people in those situations means that it’s hard to figure out whether it has become more popular. Though the percentage appears to be holding steady, th
People, places, and the policies that affect them