An article on the NPR website, about a segment on Morning Edition, came with this headline: “Americans who live alone report depression at higher rates, but social support helps.” What were those “higher rates”? Just guessing, maybe about 70 percent? Surely more than half?

In the Facebook group, The Community of Single People, Monica Pignotti flagged that article. Wisely, she did not stop at the headline. She looked for the actual percentage of people living alone who feel depressed. The answer: 6 percent! A more accurate headline would be something like, “Americans who live alone report very low rates of depression.”

The actual headline referred to “higher rates,” a comparative claim. People living alone, we are led to believe, are more likely to be depressed than people living with others. But the rates of depression for people not living alone were 4 percent. With the large number of people in the study (nearly 30,000), that was a statistically significant difference from 6 percent, but as Monica suggested, it may not be a meaningful difference. I doubt that anyone reading just the headline would........

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