How Many People Live Alone? Country-by-Country Data (2026)

Overview: living alone is common, and rises with age

Across high-income countries, one-person households have become a structural feature rather than an exception, and the pattern is strongest among older adults — especially older women, who tend to outlive male partners. The exact share depends on the age cut-off each country uses, so the figures below are grouped by their published basis (65+ in most countries, 60+ in Singapore). Two things are consistent everywhere: the share living alone climbs with each decade of age, and women living alone outnumber men by a wide margin.

In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2021 Census, via the Australian Institute of Family Studies) records that 31% of women and 18% of men aged 65 and over live alone, rising to about 35% of people aged 85 and over. In New Zealand, Stats NZ's 2023 Census puts 25.3% of people aged 65+ — roughly one in four — living alone. In the United States, US Census Bureau data (2023 Current Population Survey, analysed by Pew Research Center) shows about 28% of adults 65 and older live by themselves. In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics (Families and households, 2024) counts 4.3 million people aged 65 or over living alone. In Singapore, the Ministry of Health (citing SingStat's 2020 Census) reports about 10% of residents aged 60 and over — roughly 88,000 people — live alone.

Older adults living alone, by country

The table below compares the share of older adults living alone across five countries, each from its national statistics office. Read the age basis column carefully: most countries publish for ages 65 and over, while Singapore's figure is for ages 60 and over, so the numbers are not perfectly like-for-like. Where a country publishes a single combined figure (New Zealand, the US) it is shown; where the gendered split is the headline (Australia, the UK) both are given, because the gap between women and men is one of the clearest findings in the data.

One-person households as a share of all households

A second way to see how common solo living has become is the share of all households that contain just one person. In Australia, the ABS 2021 Census puts lone-person households at about 26% of all households — roughly one in four homes. In New Zealand, Stats NZ's 2023 Census records 389,352 one-person households, or 22.8% of all households. In the United Kingdom, the ONS counts 8.4 million people living alone in 2024 — and notably, 51.1% of them are aged 65 or over, up from 45.5% a decade earlier, reflecting an ageing population increasingly living solo.

The trend line matters as much as the level. The UK's older-adult solo-living population rose from 3.5 million in 2014 to 4.3 million in 2024. As the share of solo households skews older, the question of who would notice if an older person living alone became unwell — and how quickly — moves from a private worry to a population-scale one.

Why the numbers matter: living alone and going unnoticed

Living alone is not a problem in itself — millions of people live independent, connected lives solo by choice. The risk is narrower and specific: if you live alone and something happens — a fall, a sudden illness, a medical event — there is no one in the home to notice and call for help. That gap widens with age, exactly where the data shows solo living is most common, and it is the reason a simple, reliable way for someone to notice your absence has value.

This is the gap I Am Alive is built for. Instead of hardware or a wearable, you check in once a day. If you don't check in by your chosen time, your chosen contacts are alerted and the alert escalates. It works on every plan as alert-only — your contacts hear from us only if you go silent, never on a successful check-in — so it is a safety net, not a daily interruption. The Free plan gives a daily self check-in forever; paid plans add emergency-contact alerting, escalation, SMS, and (on Protect Me On The Move) an AI voice check and emergency location.