Number of people living alone doubles in 10 years

1 December 2004

MADRID- The number of people living alone in Spain has more than doubled in the past decade, according to new data released.

Spain’s National Statistics Office (INE) said 2.9 million people were living on their own in 2001– a rise from 1.6m in 1991.

Analysts said the change was due to the increase in the number of homes, partly explained by Spain’s current housing boom, and the comparatively small rise in the population – only five percent.

The study, conducted into how the Spanish home has changed in recent years, found most homes had two people living together.

This amounted for 25 percent of all households in Spain.

In just over a fifth of housholds or 21.5 percent, four people lived together.

There were four people living in 21.3 percent of houses and 20.3 percent had only one resident.

The number of homes in which one person lived had risen from  593.000 in 1991 to 1,210,697 ten years later.

The number of young people, between 25-34, living alone has tripled.

But the number of women over 65 who live alone has risen to 49 percent of this age range.

Analysts said the rise in the divorce rate had also played a part in the increase in people living alone.
 
In 1991, there were only 82,000 divorcees or separated people living on their own, while this figure had risen to 167,000 men and 105,000 women in 2001.

There were 11 million nuclear families.
 
More than a third of young people between 25 and 34 live with their parents (37 percent).
 
And 1.8 million carry on living with their parents after they have bought flats or homes of their own.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news