Are you single? Or I should actually rather ask: Are you living alone? The good news is: you are not alone. A recent research tells us, the majority of Berlin apartments are inhabited by one person – or in other words: the majority of Berlin households are single-person households.
For long-term Berliners this probably isn’t the newest news – already in 2004 microcensus-data showed us, that most of Berliners seem to live alone. But also locals may find it still interesting that nothing much has changed in the past ten years: Berlin (still) is the Capital of singles. And – yes – that does somehow apply to female and male Berliners. That is at least my conclusion since the report doesn’t actually distinguish between sexes.
Anyways. Here’s some of the ‘Single Facts’
- More than half of Berlin households are single households – or in numbers: 53.9% of Berlin apartments are inhabited by one person only – which is 3.7% more than the results of the last research ten years before.
- Berlin now has less households (2014: 17.7%) inhabited by three or more Berliners, than ten years ago (2004:18.9%).
- A bit more than a quarter of all Berlin households (28,4%) are two-person households.
- This ‘trend’ also seems to apply to elderly people: In Berlin over 40% of people older than 65 years live alone – in Brandenburg it’s less than 30%.
- In the inner-city districts Mitte and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg have the highest percentage of single-person apartments – 60% more households are single-person households compared to the all other Berlin districts
Berlin: households compared
What do these statistics tell us? Do men and women prefer to live alone? Is this a sign, that Berlin apartments are still quite affordable? Is the traditional family mother-father-child a vanishing construct in large cities? How does Berlin compare to other great cities like London, Paris, New York, Tokyo? I must admit I’m a bit puzzled – living in a two-person household myself I know only very few people living alone. But maybe that’s just me? I’m looking forward to read your point of view – please feel free to leave a comment…
data / microcensus-data: CC BY – Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg