Ten million French people live alone

Xalanx/epictura

Published the 30.08.2017 at 08h02

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démographievieillissementInsee

The time where parents, grandparents and children all living under the same roof is gone. The evolution of the mode of life, the aging of the population and the population growth have encouraged the at home. Households are therefore more numerous but smaller, reports a study of the Insee.

In 2013, France has identified $ 28.5 million households, 4.2 million more than in 1999. On average, the dwellings are occupied by 2.2 people, compared with 2.4 fourteen years ago. A third of them consist of one person, as two people and barely a third are composed of 3 or more people, described the Insee.

A changing society

Since the 1980s, the increase in the number of households is primarily due to the increase of those with one or two people. For Fabienne Daguet, the author of this study, the separations, the parents of generations and aging have participated in the reduction of the size of households. “The increase in the standard of living and the rapid development of the housing stock have facilitated these changes “, she adds.

So, in 2013, more than 10 million French people live alone, including 57 % of women. “Up to 23 years of age, women live more often alone than men, because they leave early in the parental home,” says the author to explain this female preponderance. Later, men and women typically reside in a couple, with or without children.

But after 75 years, the women find themselves again alone. This is the case for about half of them, compared with 21% of men of the same age. “They are more face to widowhood than men, because they are usually younger than their spouses and have lower mortality at the same ages, and they recover less often as a couple after a break-up of the union,” explains Fabienne Daguet.

20 % of lone-parent families

In a household of 2 persons, married or unmarried couples and single-parent families are the most frequent models. On the 18.7 million households, more than 14 million are constituted by couples, and nearly 3 million by a mother or a father and his child.

Among these single-parent families, more than half raise a minor child. A proportion, an increase of 87 % in 23 years. Today, one in five families is a single parent, and in the great majority the mother is the head of the family.