POSSLQ ( , plural POSSLQs) is an abbreviation (or
acronym) for "Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters", a term coined in the late 1970s by the
United States Census Bureau as part of an effort to more accurately gauge the prevalence of
cohabitation in American households.
After the
1980 Census
The United States census of 1980, conducted by the Census Bureau, determined the resident population of the United States to be 226,545,805, an increase of 11.4 percent over the 203,184,772 persons enumerated during the 1970 census. It was th ...
, the term gained currency in the wider culture for a time.
After
demographers
Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...
observed the increasing frequency of cohabitation over the 1980s, the Census Bureau began directly asking respondents to their major surveys whether they were "unmarried partners", thus making obsolete the old method of counting cohabitors, which involved a series of assumptions about "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters". The category "unmarried partner" first appeared in the
1990 Census, and was incorporated into the monthly
Current Population Survey starting in 1995. By the late 1990s, the term POSSLQ had fallen out of general usage (having been replaced by "
significant other") and returned to being a specialized term for demographers.
In popular culture
CBS commentator
Charles Osgood composed a verse which includes
Elliot Sperber, the writer of ''
The Hartford Courant
The ''Hartford Courant'' is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is considered to be the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven ...
''s weekly
cryptogram, invented a cryptogram that (when solved) said:
In a fifth-season episode of the television show ''
Cheers
''Cheers'' is an American sitcom television series that ran on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, with a total of 275 half-hour episodes across 11 seasons. The show was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions in association w ...
'',
Frasier Crane and
Lilith Sternin
Lilith Sternin (formerly Sternin-Crane) is a fictional character on the American television sitcoms ''Cheers'' and ''Frasier'', portrayed by Bebe Neuwirth. The character first appears as a date for Frasier Crane, though mutual hostility and disc ...
describe themselves as POSSLQs.
See also
*
Cohabitation in the United States
Cohabitation in the United States is loosely defined as two or more people, in an intimate relationship, who live together and share a common domestic life but are neither joined by marriage nor a civil union.
*
Common-law marriage
*
Family (U.S. Census)
A family is defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes as "a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together; all such people (including related su ...
*
Significant other
References
External links
{{Wiktionary, POSSLQ
"How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of Cohabitation" a U.S. Census Bureau working paper by Lynne M. Casper, Philip N. Cohen and Tavia Simmons, May 1999.
Acronyms
Marriage, unions and partnerships in the United States
1970s neologisms