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TH E M R EP O RT | 9 MDWELL Source: HouseCanary I n this tumultuous election year with its greatly polarized candi- dates, the politics around gender equality are one of many hot- button issues. Given that residential real estate is the largest asset class in the U.S., the HouseCanary team set out to explore one simple question: When it comes to home ownership, where do women stand? While there are numerous fragmented data sets, the data science team ultimately tapped into the most comprehensive survey—The 2014 American Community Survey data, an ongoing statistical survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. In family households, only one person can be named "Head of Household," but the Census/ACS data does not list this person's gen - der if he/she is married. However, gender is collected when the family householder is not married. So, we wondered, among Not-Married Family Householders, what percentage are female? The results are definitely surprising. It's important to note that the ACS defines two types of household - ers. A "Family Householder" is a householder living with one or more individuals related to him or her by birth, marriage, or adoption. A "Nonfamily Householder" is a householder living alone or with non- relatives only. Women in Housing: You've come a long way, Non-Married Head of Household Of the 115.9 million family households that are either rented or owned, 20.6 million (17.8 percent) of householders are not married. Digging down, when we look at the gender of these heads of households, we see a male/female ratio that is significant; a whopping 73.2% of the non-married Heads of Household are women—a 3:1 ratio compared to non-married men. Among homeowners the data shows a higher percentage of non-married male HHs own their homes (53.9 percent) compared to just 45.6 percent of non-married women HHs… but, when you factor in the higher percentage of non-married women in the HH roles overall, they are still more than twice as likely to own their home compared to non-married males. STATES WITH LOWEST PERCENT OF FEMALE NON-MARRIED HH: NON-MARRIED FAMILY HOUSEHOLDERS female-Owned male-Owned 72.4% 27.6% Florida 73.0% 27.0% South Carolina 73.6% 26.4% Georgia 74.3% 25.7% Alabama 75.1% 24.9% Mississippi female-Owned male-Owned 61.1% 38.9% North Dakota 62.0% 38.0% South Dakota 62.1% 37.9% Alaska 62.5% 37.5% Wyoming 63.2% 36.8% Montana STATES WITH HIGHEST PERCENT OF FEMALE NON-MARRIED HH: √ Which U.S. states are more likely to have a higher percentage of non- married women Heads of Household? Turns out, all of them do—a finding that could correlate closely to single mothers with children. Heads of households who OWN homes: 69.8 % 30.2 % 2,980,040 6,885,291