Der Aufstieg des Alleinlebens in Amerika [OC]
Von OverflowDs
Der Aufstieg des Alleinlebens in Amerika [OC]
Von OverflowDs
26 Kommentare
Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey
Tool: Tableau
Isolating every aspect of our lives is how capitalism erodes faith and trust in others. Instilling the false belief that it all must be done on your own.
I want to see the swing of this data. With stagnant wages and high rent, I would wager that there is also a stark increase in the number of roommates as well, or non-family cohabitants in apartments or rental homes.
Don’t worry the economy will change that.
I suspect this is the influence of feminism. it became more normal for both men and women to go to work or college after high school and live independently for a while rather than getting married at 18 or 19. obviously this mostly applied to young people who were affluent and career bound.
Overlay this on the chart for average marriage age and you’ll have your answer.
I can’t fathom this, almost everybody I know, if they aren’t with somebody, they have roommates because of rent prices, and I’m in a fairly “LCOL” area (used to be LCOL but kinda caught up where 1 bedroom apartment is 1700$/mo
I won’t speculate on causes, of which there are likely a myriad of contributors, but the ramifications are huge.
Lots of comments about young people with roommates. I wonder how older people living in their house longer has influenced this.
I wonder what this looks like if you could find the average square foot occupied per person.
More young adults are living with their parents so I’m surprised the solo numbers are going up unless the average square footage is going down.
Big surge between 1960 and 1980. Wonder if that got to do with Vietnam War as one of biggest factors?
I thought this was a new Star Wars sequel when I first read OP’s title.
Allowing women to have checking accounts and mortgages without a man co-signing probably contributed to this.
That is very interesting. If people live on their own, that requires a lot more housing than if people are living together. For example, if people lived in pairs, there only needs to be half the houses required compared with what would be needed if everyone lived alone.
that’s weird, i was pretty sure the ones not living with their families would be living with other people. I guess the housing market was not as bad as i thought
When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone! I’m living alone, I’m living alone!
While this data is from the US, it’s interesting to note that Sweden has the highest rate of solo living anywhere, and it’s also one of the happiest countries. You can live alone and still have a fulfilling social life if your society and economy support it.
While there are a bunch of factors I read an interesting piece about towns zoning out boarding houses during Jim Crow that talked a lot about how much this caused people not to room together as much. I know when I was single if I could have shared a place with a full time caretaker for the property and a cook I’d have been ecstatic.
How can anyone afford to live alone?
This is an under-discussed factor in general housing affordability. Specifically that we need a lot more houses for the same population than we previously did.
Holy shit. 1990 is as far away from today as it is from 1960 as it is from 2020!
is this rise actually driven by people choosing to live alone, or by housing costs pushing people into smaller households? would be super interesting to see this normalized by age groups + urban vs rural, cuz a lot of the “solo living” trend is actually boomers aging into single-person households after 2000s.
Baby boomers coming of age surely affected these numbers.
Contrast this with the decline of Single Room Occupancy dwellings starting in the 1950s
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2025/07/how-states-and-cities-decimated-americans-lowest-cost-housing-option
I see a slowly reverse trend – which is even worse. More and more people which do not love each other at all are marrying and living together to cope with the rising housing costs. I also see more people making kids „to have someone when Social Security does not exist anymore.“ The society goes back to the pre-industrial era.
This is also related to the NIMBY argument that we have enough houses and so we don’t need to build more.
If houses hold fewer people than they used to we need more just to maintain the same price levels even with the same population.