Every 2nd family nuclear in NSW

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says the proportion of people living in a nuclear family has dropped to less than half of the New South Wales population.

The number of couples with dependant children has dropped to 48 per cent of 1.9 million families in NSW.

The statistical snapshot of NSW shows couples without children have risen to 37 per cent.

Lone person households are now more than a quarter of all homes. The ABS says that trend is partly fuelled by an ageing population.

Fourteen per cent of the general population are now over 65 years of age. In stark contrast, people over the age of 65 make up just 3 per cent of the Indigenous population.

The Bureau of Statistics says just under one in three Australians now live in NSW, even though the birth rate continues to decline.

Migration is the single biggest contributor to the state's population rising to 6.89 million.

But people in NSW have to pay the country's highest housing costs and the state's economic growth is slower than that of the national economy.

The state recorded a growth rate of 1.8 per cent between 2006 and 2007.

Unemployment has dropped substantially between 1988 and 2008, while household income has risen by 17 per cent in the last five years.