More than a third of the households in Germany are single households

WIESBADEN – The proportion of single households in Germany is 37.2%; thus 17.1% if the population live alone. Among those 13.4 million people, just 17.6% are less than 30 years old. 42.0% of them live in cities with 100,000 or more inhabitants. Based on the results of the 2011 Census, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) also reports that single households are the most frequent household type in Germany.

On census reference date 9 May 2011, 98.5% of the population in Germany lived in 37.6 million households and 1.5% in collective or institutional living quarters. Slightly more than half (51.2%) of the population in households live in twos or threes and there are more than twice as many two-person households (33.2%) as three-person households (14.5%). Households with five or more persons account for 4.8% of the households in Germany and comprise 9.7 million people.

In 60.3% of the households, people live together as families. This includes couples with or without children and lone parents with children. Families with children (32.7%) are more frequent than families without children (27.6%).

In 45.1% of the households there are married couples, while unmarried cohabiting couples account for 7.3% of the households. Lone parents represent 7.8% of the households, with the number of lone mothers being roughly five times that of lone fathers. Registered same-sex partnerships are much less frequent than any other family form (a total of a good 29,000). In only just under 9.6% of the registered same-sex partnerships there are children.

The most frequent form of families with children is the one-child family (54.4%). Their proportion varies between 47.7% for married couples, 69.3% for lone mothers and 76.2% for lone fathers. As regards families with two children, married couples with children are most frequent (39.2%).

In 22.0% of the households there are only senior citizens, that is, people aged 64 years or over, while in 69.1% there are no persons of that age. In 8.9% of the households, senior citizens live together with younger people. 95.6% of the over 64 year olds live in households, while just 4.4% live in collective or institutional living quarters. It should be noted here that households include, for instance, apartment homes for the elderly to the extent that such homes allow separate housekeeping.

On the website of the Federal Statistical Office and at www.zensus2011.de, charts and comprehensive tables are available for download, providing the main census data in a partly detailed regional breakdown.

For further information:
Steffen Seibel,
tel: +49 611 75 3767
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