The Number Of American Households Without Landlines Is Exploding
Cellphones continue to become ever more dominant in our society, and people are increasingly trading in their landline phones.
Pew Research Center reports on a new study by the National Center for Health Statistics detailing estimates of cellphone use in American households, based on the July-December 2013 National Health Interview Survey.
This chart from the Pew report shows how dramatic the rise in wireless-only households has been in the last few years:
As can be seen in the chart, the proportion of adults that are living in wireless-only households has more than doubled since 2007. Pew notes that, "As one might expect, young adults are the most likely to be living the wireless-only lifestyle. Nearly two-thirds (65.7%) of 25- to 29-year-olds, 59.7% of 30- to 34-year-olds, and 53% of 18- to 24-year-olds live in wireless-only households, according to the center."
The chart also shows that households in poverty are more likely than those not in poverty to be cell-only. The NCHS study points out as well that about three in four adults living with unrelated roommates and three in five adults who rent their homes have no landlines.
The NCHS study also notes that only 8.6% of households were landline-only in the second half of 2013, meaning the vast majority of households are either wireless-only or rely on a mixture of cellphones and landlines.