This appeared a few days ago:
Why are more and more people living alone?
Updated 12:11AM September 13, 2025
The Weekend Australian Magazine
It’s a social issue gathering momentum, and could reshape the way we live, and care, within a generation. I’m talking about the number of us living alone.
The proportion of Australians living alone rises and falls throughout the life-cycle as housemates, life partners and children come and go. Aloneness especially surges in the late seventies and eighties as life partners die off.
The social issue of concern is the fact that the oldest Baby Boomer is now 79, which means that aloneness (as well as loneliness) is likely to shape the way we live. Generally it’s Dad who dies in his late seventies, and grieving families are left to manage Mum’s (often fierce) determination to remain in the family home. All of a sudden siblings scramble to reorganise their lives to drop in on Mum. The geography of who lives where can determine who carries the load of keeping connection, and of keeping the family abreast. Sometimes this works; but often, for whatever reason, it’s problematic. Not all families can happily work together.
According to the 2021 Census, peak aloneness is reached at age 90, when 34 per cent of Australians live alone. Over the 15 years to the Census, the number of 90-year-olds living alone increased six-fold. By mid-2035 this number will skyrocket as Boomers spill into their nineties. How will we deliver healthcare, social contact, technology support and meaningful connection to an elderly cohort that may not have family around?
Peak aloneness is reached at age 90, when 34 per cent of Australians live alone.
But it’s not just in the later stages of life that Australians live alone; aged 29, nine per cent of us do so. By this time in life we’ve had the housemates experience, and likely trialled a relationship (or two) that didn’t quite work out. The late twenties is a time when many can afford to – and prefer to – live alone.
But priorities change in the thirties as life partners and kids tend to arrive. The nadir of the living-alone curve scoots across what looks like the happy-partnering years of 38 to 41 inclusive. At no other time in the life-cycle are Australians less likely to live alone than in these four Lego-laden child-rearing years.
It’s not just in the later stages of life that Australians live alone; aged 29, nine per cent of us do so.
What a time in life, and career. Elsewhere in the Census there is evidence that Australians working full-time reach their earnings peak at the age of 43. Here are households shaped, if not defined, by the presence of life partners, by the arrival of babies, by the transformation of infants into toddlers and by the prospects of a surging career. Does life get any more hectic?
Well, yes, it does – because by the mid-forties single life resurges as relationships break down. Ten per cent of Australians live alone by age 50; by age 60 this rises to 16 per cent; by 70 it’s 20 per cent. Aloneness in these years is likely fed by separation or, increasingly, by the death of a partner.
It is tempting to suggest that adult Australians spend more time living alone than with friends and family. But even across the peak separation and end-of-life decades – from, say, 70 onwards – two-thirds live in a household with someone else. Most commonly that someone is their life partner.
And while we do need to be aware of the scourge of loneliness as we age, we shouldn’t confuse aloneness with loneliness. Some people are quite comfortable enjoying the solitude and the serenity of their own company.
Here is the link:
A interesting analysis of how and who we live with as we age. The variation is huge!
David.
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