Question

The article "Ozzie and Harriet Don't Live Here Anymore" (San Luis Obispo Tribune, February 26,2002 ) looked at the changing makeup of America's suburbs. The article states that in the suburbs of the nation's largest cities, nonfamily households (for example, homes headed by a single professional or an elderly widow) now outnumber married couples with children. The article goes on to state: In the nation's 102 largest metropolitan areas, "nonfamilies" comprised 29 percent of households in 2000 , up from 27 percent in 1990 . While the number of married-with-children homes grew too, the share did not keep pace. It declined from 28 percent to 27 percent. Married couples without children at home live in another 29 percent of suburban households. The remaining 15 percent are single-parent homes. Use the given information on type of household in the year 2000 to construct a frequency distribution and a bar chart. (Make sure to only extract the year 2000 percentages from the given information.)

Short answer

The frequency distribution shows that nonfamily households and married couples without children both constitute 29% of the households, followed by married couples with children (27%), and single-parent households (15%). A bar chart based on these frequencies would visually represent these differences as well.

Step-by-step solution

Identify the Categories and their Corresponding Frequencies

Based on the information in the exercise, four types of households are identified in the suburbs of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas in the year 2000. Their corresponding frequencies are:\n\n1. Nonfamily households: 29%\n2. Married couples with children: 27%\n3. Married couples without children: 29%\n4. Single-parent households: 15%

Construct a Frequency Distribution

A frequency distribution arranges the values of a dataset into categories along with the corresponding frequencies. For this situation, it can be constructed as follows:\n\n| Household Type | Frequency (\%) |\n| ---------------------------------------- | -------------- |\n| Nonfamily | 29 |\n| Married with children | 27 |\n| Married without children | 29 |\n| Single-parent households | 15 |\n| Total | 100 |\n

Create a Bar Chart

A bar chart can be created based on the frequency distribution. Unfortunately, in the scope of this text-form exercise, one cannot visually represent a bar chart. Generally, each category would be represented by a distinct bar, with the height corresponding to the frequency.