Over a quarter (27.6%) of all U.S. occupied households were one-person households in 2020, up from just 7.7% in 1940, according to recently released 2020 Census data.

The share of people living alone increased every decade from 1940 to 2020 (Figure 1). The largest increase happened between 1970 and 1980, when the share increased from 17.6% to 22.7%.

Counties with the highest percentages of households with one person age 65 or over living alone were concentrated in the central Midwest.

The overall share of people living alone inched up (from 26.7% to 27.6%) between 2010 and 2020. So did the share (from 9.4% to 11.1%) of one-person households headed by adults ages 65 and over. But the share of one-person households among people ages 15 to 64 declined from 17.3% to 16.5% during the same period.

Figure 1. One-Person Households as a Percentage of All U.S. Households: 1940-2020

Living Alone by County

Counties with the highest percentage of one-person households were concentrated in the Midwest (for example, Minnesota, Nebraska and North Dakota) as well as in Alabama and Mississippi (Figure 2a).

Figure 2b shows a similar pattern for households with one person ages 15 to 64 living alone, although the counties are less concentrated in the Midwest. A high proportion of counties in the Mississippi River Delta had high percentages of one-person households in that age group.

Counties with the highest percentages of households with one person age 65 or over living alone were concentrated in the central Midwest (Figure 2c). Florida, Maine and Oregon were among other states with large swaths of counties with big shares of households with older adults living alone.

The opposite was true in Alaska and Utah, where most counties had low percentages of older one-person households.

Figure 2a. One-Person Households, All Ages, as a Percentage of All Households: 2020

Figure 2b. One-Person Households, Ages 15 to 64, as a Percentage of All Households: 2020

Figure 2c. One-Person Households, Ages 65 and Over, as a Percentage of All Households: 2020

Older Adults Living Alone More Prevalent in Rural Counties

Overall, larger counties by population typically had greater shares of single householders ages 15-64 and smaller counties had more one-person householders 65 and older.

For example, take Los Angeles County, California, the nation’s most populous county with about 3.4 million occupied households. In 2020, about 16.1% of households there were headed by someone 15-64 living alone and only 8.7% by single householders 65 and older.

But in Pulaski County, Kentucky, which has just 26,405 occupied households, about 14.8% of households had one-person householders ages 15-64 and 13.5% had householders 65 and older living alone.

Table 1 shows the percentages of one-person households for the five most and least populous U.S. counties with a population of at least 65,000 people.

Table 1. Share of One-Person Households in Five of the Most and Least Populous U.S. Counties: 2020

Lydia Anderson, Chanell Washington, Rose M. Kreider, and Thomas Gryn are family demographers in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch of the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.