SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — New census numbers showing nearly half of California’s adults are still single could explain the flood of online dating apps. It’s a trend that started 15 years ago.

Californians have been waiting longer to get married, but now more people are choosing to live together and raise families outside of marriage.

“People in religious communities tend to have more support for being married. We’re such a secular place here in California, so there’s less support for that. So it’s, you’re not as encouraged to get married, and you’re not as encouraged to stay married,” Leora Lawton, Demographer and Executive Director of the Berkeley Population Center said.

51% of California adults are married, and that’s down from 74% in 1960. 34% have never married. A lot of this can be chalked up to an increase in personal wealth.

“What this really says is that Americans or people in general really aren’t as family oriented as we like to pretend. We’ve been pushing to that circumstance based on economic realities, but when our economic wellbeing advances to the point where quote unquote family isn’t necessary, we’ve chosen a more solitary existence. I guess deep down inside we’re all cats,” Chris Thornberg with Beacon Economics said.

There are two sides to divorce, with some seeing rates drop during the recession because people couldn’t afford to separate into two different households, while older adults realized after the kids grew up they didn’t really want to spend the next 30 years with their spouse.