MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

One-person households on the rise in Brazil

There are more men than women living alone

The proportion of Brazilian one-person households has grown by 52% in 12 years, Agencia Brasil reported during the weekend. In 2024, 18.6% of households were inhabited by only one person. In 2012, this share stood at 12.2%.

In 2012, Brazil had 61.2 million addresses, 7.5 million of which had one resident. In 2024, households totaled 77.3 million, 14.4 million of which with just one person, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Research analyst William Kratochwill pointed out that the growth in single-occupant households was associated with the aging of the population. According to the survey, in 12 years the proportion of people aged 65 or older rose from 7.7 to 11.2%, as ”40% of single-person households in Brazil are occupied by people aged 60 or older,” he noted.

“These are people who have been widowed or who used to live with their families, but whose children have gone on to start their own families, leaving them increasingly alone,” he went on to say.

Of the 14.4 million people living alone in 2024, the majority were men (55.1%), while 44.9% were women.

Among men, most (57.2%) are 30 through 59 years old. “It may also be the case that a man gets divorced and the children stay with the woman,” he pointed out. “There are also those who find a new job in another state and move there to settle down first and bring their family later – or they just move temporarily, for a year or two,” he added.

Among women who live alone, the predominant age group was over 60, which accounts for 55.5% of this female population.

“These are people who are already at the end of their life cycle, with their children having their own families, their husbands having passed away,” Kratochwill said.

The survey found that Brazil had 211.9 million people in 2024. Women accounted for just over half (51.2%), which means there are 95.2 men for every 100 women in Brazil.

In line with the trend predicted by the 2022 census, pardo people outnumbered white people, reaching 46.1% of the Brazilian population. A total of 42.1% declared themselves white and 10.7% black.

Almost half (42%) of the country’s residents lived in the Southeast in 2024. São Paulo is the state with the largest number of residents, with almost 46 million inhabitants, representing 22% of the country’s population.