econlife - What We Buy When We Are Single by Elaine Schwartz

Procter & Gamble is test marketing giant rolls of toilet paper. Called Forever Rolls, they could last as long as two or three months in a one person household. Since singles typically have less storage space, bigger rolls are ideal for people who don’t want to store smaller size backups.

You can see that more of us are living alone:

And living alone will impact what we buy.

What Singles Buy

The Betty Crocker people at General Mills saw cake mix sales drop and single slice deli aisle purchases rise. Projecting that the number of one and two person households will rise by 7 percent by 2024, they created Mug Treats. As they describe them, you just place your batter packet in the microwave and wind up with a single freshly baked slice of cake.

Appliance demand is also changing. Instead of asking about the number of towels that fit, smaller households care about washer size. One appliance maker said that single person households purchase 19 percent of major appliances. Responding, they are making scaled down dishwashers, refrigerators, and cooktops that fit into smaller kitchens.

Our Bottom Line:  More Households

For reasons that range from aging populations to smaller families to divorce, the gap between population and household growth will probably grow. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), Scotland projects 9 percent population growth by 2037 while the increase in households will be 17 percent. England tells us that by 2041, it expects household growth to exceed a 16 percent rise in population by 7 percent.

You can see below that one person households have increased in developed nations:

Because of the extra homes that will need appliances, roads, sewage hookups, and so much more, the Atlantic’s City Lab said we have a “ticking household bomb.” In 2014, they called it a massive sustainability problem.

While I suspect the economic growth tradeoff could be greener than City Lab expected, we can be sure that smaller households will have a big impact.

My sources and more: WSJ was a handy place to start for living alone facts. From there, WEF, City Lab, Deloitte, and IPS News provided insight.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz’s work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.

econlife - Who Is Likely to Live Alone? by Elaine Schwartz

Sort of like bookends, we tend to live alone before we are 30 and after we reach 65. However, many of us are “unpartnered.”

Who Lives Alone?

Among those of us who live alone, 58% have never been married, 21% are divorced, and 14% have been widowed. So yes, we are talking about a lot of people. One-tenth of all Americans and slightly more than one-quarter of all households are singles.

An NYU sociologist tells us that living alone is the logical result of four trends:

1. feminism
2. living in cities
3. communications technology
4. longevity

Pew Research meanwhile focuses on marriage, income, and education.

Marriage is one reason that the number of singles is up. In 2018, the average American woman married at 27.8 and her mate was 29.8. She is almost eight years older than her mother and grandmother when they married. Also, there are more people who never marry:

For men, affluence is a singles predictor. Below, $40,000 a year, less than one half of all men are married. Above, the figures climb. And once we get to $75,000-$100,000, two-thirds of all men have tied that knot.

From here, education makes a difference. People with bachelor degrees tend to have partners more than those who do not:

Where Do We Live Alone?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, singles are concentrated in 21 urban areas where more than 1/3 of every household is occupied by one person. One reason could be that all but one have a lower cost of living. Another relates to the widowed population:

An interesting single household fact: In 2017, Utah (19.6%) had the fewest single person households. At 45.2% Washington D.C had the most.

Our Bottom Line: Consumption Expenditures

Living alone shifts how we spend our money. It changes the consumption components of the GDP.

A BLS study from 2011 concluded that except for healthcare, singles in their 20s (especially late 20s) spend “considerably” more per capita on food and clothing, housing, and education than comparably aged married couples.

A more recent but less academic report looked at the bigger picture. It told us that single people take more vacations, are a “gold mine” for home entertainment equipment, going to the cinema, and dining out. And we should note that in China, Single’s Day has become a massive event.

Where are we? Affecting where we live, what we buy, and how we spend our time, the singles trend is a major economic phenomenon.

My sources and more: The Hill was a good starting point for the big picture on singles. From there, it made sense to find more on how singles spend and where the unpartnered live. Then, for further insight and detail, I suggest this New Yorker article, Pew, here and here, and this BLS study.

Ideal for the classroom, econlife.com reflects Elaine Schwartz’s work as a teacher and a writer. As a teacher at the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she’s been an Endowed Chair in Economics and chaired the history department. She’s developed curricula, was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom,” and has written several books including Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). You can get econlife on a daily basis! Head to econlife.