There are fewer marriages, more families choosing to cohabit, and more people who live alone in retirement according to recent data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ‘Families and households in the UK: 2024’ report provides estimates of families and household types, including people living alone in the UK in 2024. The numbers show a rise in the numbers of cohabitating families across the UK. A small reduction in number of married or civil-partnered couples from 67.1% of families 10 years ago to 65.1% of families today, is offset by an increase in the number of cohabiting couple families; 17.7% up from 16.4% 10 years ago.
Cohabiting families have increased from 3.1m in 2014, to 3.5m in 2024, making up 17.7% of all family households. In 2024, 95.8% of cohabiting couples were opposite sex. The proportion that were same-sex increased from 2.7% in 2014 to 4.2% in 2024.
The cost of living crisis and affordability of housing means a 9% increase over the last 10 years in the number of people aged 20-34 who live with their parents. 28% of 20-34 years olds still live at home – compared to 25.6% in 2014.
There are suggestions there are implication for parents here too. In many cases parents will be covering the cost of having their children at home with a knock on impact on their ability to save for retirement. If downsizing was part of the plan, it could mean their retirement is delayed until their children move out.
Half of people living alone were aged 65 years or over in 2024
A growing number of people lived alone in 2014 with an increase of 0.8m from 7.6m to 8.4m over the last 10 years, up around 11% over the last decade compared to population growth of 7%. Of those around half (51.1%) of all people living alone in 2024 were aged 65 years or over, compared with 45.5% in 2014; a steady increase 3.5m in 2014 to 4.3m in 2024. Indeed, over 65’s accounted for the total rise in people living alone over the past ten years.
Although a larger proportion of women over 65 live alone (40.9%) than men (27%), largely due to life expectancy, the number of men of this age living alone has grown faster than women (21.9% 10 years earlier) – for women it has barely changed.
