According to the latest calculations and forecasts by the Federal Statistical Office, the number of single-person households in Germany will rise to 19.3 million by 2040. In 2018, around 17.3 million people lived alone in a private household. A detailed list of the Federal Statistical Office's calculations of population trends in Germany can be found in the volume "Entwicklung der Privathaushalte bis 2040 - Ergebnisse der Haushaltsvorausberechnung 2020".
The trend toward a steady increase in single-person households has been observed since the end of the 1950s, ever since household calculations were carried out statistically. According to the German Federal Statistical Office, the proportion of single-person households has been the largest group for more than forty years and, according to forecasts, will continue to rise in the future. It should be noted that it is not only the younger generation that lives alone in the household, but that more and more older people are also running their own household or a two-person household.
On the one hand, this is possible because the quality of life in old age has increasingly improved in recent decades and many older people are able to live independently even into old age. On the other hand, the life expectancy of men has increased in recent years and the gap between them and their partners has narrowed, so that couples are also living together in a two-person household for longer. In the younger generation, later marriages and starting families mean that young people are living alone or with their partners for longer. Developments and structural change since reunification have also led to a division of multi-person households into numerous single-person households, especially in the nine federal states.
Source: destatis
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