We are fans of facts here at NHFPI, so this Father’s Day we rounded up some detailed data about New Hampshire’s dads. 

More Than a Quarter Million Dads with Kids at Home 

New Hampshire was home to approximately 272,500 fathers of children living in their households during the 2019-2023 period. That number of dads living with their kids was the equivalent of about 48.6 percent of males age 18 and over living in the state. That figure does not include fathers of children who have moved away or otherwise live outside of the household.  

Single Dads 

About 5,900 households in the state were headed by fathers living with children and without a spouse or cohabitating partner present during the 2019-2023 period. For comparison, there were about 17,300 single female householders with children, 96,100 married-couple households with children, and about 12,500 households with cohabitating, unmarried couples with children. A total of about 12,100 households with children were headed by unmarried men, even if a cohabitating adult was with them as the other half of a couple. 

Of those 12,100 single dad households, about 2,500 (21 percent) were families with children and incomes within 130 percent of the federal poverty threshold, or the equivalent of about $27,303 of annual income for a household with one adult under 65 and one child in 2023. There are about 8,300 single moms with these low incomes, too. 

An income of less than $27,303 per year falls well below key cost-of-living estimates. For example, a single parent with one child in New Hampshire was $93,451 according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator. The Economic Policy Institute, using separate, county-level calculations with a different methodology, estimated the cost of living for a “modest yet adequate standard of living” in Grafton County, which had the fifth-highest estimated expenses of the state’s ten counties, would be $73,368. 

Counting all kids living with male householders without a spouse present, including men living with their own children or stepchildren, grandchildren, other relative children, or foster children, about 21,200 Granite Staters under 18 years old lived in a household with a single male leading it. 

Working for the Future 

For about 18,100 of the children who lived with their single father, dad was working while also heading the household. About 129,400 children lived in a two-parent household with both parents in the labor force, and 39,300 lived with a single working mom. Among two-parent households in the state, about 38,400 children lived in one where just the father worked, while 5,900 lived in households where only the mother worked, according to data collected from 2019 through 2023 as described by the U.S. Census Bureau.   

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