Watch just about any romantic comedy or talk to your haughtiest married friends and you’ll see that single life is wrapped in stigma. As the stereotype goes, single people would be much better off if only they got married.

As New York University sociologist Eric Klinenberg writes in his book, “Going Solo,” when discussed publicly, the rise of living alone is often presented as an unmitigated social problem and a sign of diminished public life.

But not everybody thinks this way.

In the US, people are getting hitched less often than they once did, and young Americans are putting off marriage more than ever before.

In 1962, half of 21-year-olds and 90% of 30-year-olds had been married at least once. In 2014, only 8% of 21-year-olds and 55% of 30-year-olds had been married.

Single Americans are now the majority.

“For decades social scientists have been worrying that our social connections are fraying, that we’ve become a society of lonely narcissists,” Klinenberg tells The New York Times. “I’m not convinced.”

And neither are a number of researchers. These studies begin to unpack the question of how being single affects your success, for worse or better:

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