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    The Rise of Solo Living in America [OC]
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    The Rise of Solo Living in America [OC]


    The Rise of Solo Living in America [OC]

    Posted by OverflowDs

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    31 Comments

    2. cpzy2 on

      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.

    3. commissionerahueston on

      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.

    5. ramesesbolton on

      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.

    7. Kaopio on

      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

    8. TechnocraticAlleyCat on

      I won’t speculate on causes, of which there are likely a myriad of contributors, but the ramifications are huge.

    9. youre_stoked on

      Lots of comments about young people with roommates. I wonder how older people living in their house longer has influenced this.

    10. Deep90 on

      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.

    11. sapienecks on

      Big surge between 1960 and 1980. Wonder if that got to do with Vietnam War as one of biggest factors?

    13. fapestniegd on

      Allowing women to have checking accounts and mortgages without a man co-signing probably contributed to this.

    14. PyrrhoTheSkeptic on

      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.

    15. KnGod on

      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

    16. FlimFlamBingBang on

      When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone! I’m living alone, I’m living alone!

    17. hbarSquared on

      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.

    18. fastdbs on

      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.

    20. blundermine on

      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.

    22. Brighter_rocks on

      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.

    25. Bonamikengue on

      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.

    26. eskimospy212 on

      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. 

    27. threearbitrarywords on

      You can’t really complain about the cost of housing if you think you’re entitled to live by yourself. Housing density has been on the decline for decades and guess what? Living alone is at least twice as expensive as living with someone else. I’m over 60 and in all that time, I’ve lived by myself for a total of maybe 3 years. The rest has been living in housing shared with multiple families, immediate family, dorm mates, roommates, girlfriends, and a wife. That means I’ve saved over a million dollars in rent and mortgage payments in my life by simply not living alone. Probably quite a bit more if I did the math.

    28. Aquitaine_Rover_3876 on

      This isn’t beautiful data. This is a datapoint that needs so much more to actually tell a story.

      In particular, I want to know the comparative changes in

      – Households inhabited by a couple (married or common-law)

      – Households inhabited by a family with children (minor or adult) and 2 or more parents

      – Households inhabited by a family with children (minor or adult) and 1 parent

      – Households inhabited by a peer group (ie., a roommate arrangement)

      My hypothesis is that there will be a decline in 2-parent and couple homes, due to rising divorce rates and women’s increased economic independence. This will partly offset by a definition change where homosexual couples used to be reported as roommates.

      The interesting bit will be seeing how roommates evolved, particularly for a given age range…my impression is that more people choose to live without roommates now. Though again, teasing out the noise caused by broadening our definition of families might be a challenge.

      Plus a breakdown by age range to see how much relates to aging population vs social changes. At the height of the baby boom, it would make sense that living alone was rare since so many people were dependent children.

      This one number hints at so many potentially interesting bits of data, but on its own tells us almost nothing.

    30. FCguyATL on

      People stopped marrying and everyone stopped thinking that having roommates was okay and they deserved a one bedroom apartment on a fry cook’s budget.