Women Make Up Majority of Single-Person Households

Cambridge, MA, June 4, 2015 -- Perhaps nothing speaks greater volume about changes in modern American life than the rise of the single-person household, says Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The center noted that a recent paper authored by Census Bureau researchers shows that a hundred years ago, fewer than six percent of all households consisted of people who lived alone.

By 1940, that share had only inched upward to 7.8 percent. By 2013, at 28 percent of all households, it is now the second most common household type just behind married couples without minor children (29 percent), and well ahead of marrieds with minor children in the household (19 percent).

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, single-person households consisted mostly of men, but the greatest gains in living alone during the past 50 years have been among women.

Today, women head 54 percent of all single-person households, and they're spread across all ages. In the past, when living alone might have been a short-term condition, for many it is now a long-term situation, the result of a number of broad demographic and economic forces.