How many people are living alone? How many are living in two dwellings? The case of France

Sophie Pennec, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

How many people are living alone? How many are living in two dwellings? The case of France In France, according to the last census, one person out of seven is living alone. Behind this result, sits diverse situations that are more or less well depicted by the data and are related to the numerous definitions/conventions used to define dwellings where people live and how the list of inhabitant of the dwelling is established. The comparison of results from census data and survey data allow a better description of the real situation of those persons that are considered as living alone in censuses. Most of them are always alone, but some are not always alone in all their households. We will look at the trends over time of population in 4 categories: living alone, in a couple, in institutions and those not living in any previous categories with a particular focus on those living alone and those in the latter category. In this group we will disentangle the one-parent families, the “false out of family person” i.e. those considered by census rules as out of the family but actually being a member (adult children, old parent…), those living in a non-relatives household (house-sharing) as they can be considered as a form of living alone. We will look at the trends by age and sex and using some socio-economic variables such as urban/country and level of education. For this paper, we used French census data from the IPUMS international database 1962-2006 and different French statistical office survey data (labour force survey, household surveys, French SILC panel data).