Single women boosting global economy

A story published today by the London Telegraph reports that single, educated women have become one of the most powerful driving forces in the global economy.

According  to a study by the market research company,  Datamonitor, modern women have more earning potential than their mothers and grandmothers.

With their own pensions, mortgages, life policies and investments, they now wield huge economic clout.

The study reiterated that politicians largely ignored this new demographic group, dubbed Sex and the City voters, while advertisers were failing to recognize their strength.

Datamonitor's study entitled, Trends in Women's Lives, said: 'The marketing industry has always acknowledged women to be a powerful consumer force. But this has been due to their role as purchasers for an entire household. Women are now independent and confident consumers.'

In England, there were more women than men training as accountants and lawyers, attracted by the high earning power, it said.

Across the European Union as a whole, more women than men were taking up tertiary education to boost their earning potential.

This had been accompanied by a 52 percent increase in single female homebuyers in the past decade, with single women now buying one in seven properties and accounting for nearly a fifth of new mortgage lending.

Britain's divorce rate, the highest in Europe, and a narrowing of the male-female pay divide was helping to fuel a rapid growth in the number of single women with liquid assets of more than £25,000.

Datamonitor said that last year, single females helped to push women's spending power in Europe and America as a whole to £2,000 billion, a figure which will rise to £2,500 billion in the next five years.

Ms. Bella DePaulo, chairman of the board of academic advisers of the American Association for Single People, said: 'They aren't considered a voting block and no one panders to them but politicians must pay attention.'

In the United States, Democratic Party pollsters, who work closely with Britain's Labor Party, had identified single women as the key demographic group that it must galvanize if it was to recover the White House next year.