Singles worldwide - Statistics & Facts

Divorce and single parenting

For some people, being single might just be a life choice. For others, instead, it is the result of an ended marriage. In the European Union, divorce rates are rather high in general, but no country gets close to Luxembourg’s odd record. In this small state, in fact, almost nine out of 10 marriages end up in a divorce. An increasing number of divorces often translates into a rising number of children who grow up mainly with one parent. In terms of religious affiliation, Christians worldwide recorded the highest share of people living in single-parent households. Data suggest that single moms were much more numerous than single dads, and that the U.S. had the highest share of single parenting. Moreover, raising children while relying on just one income might prove to be a challenge: in Ireland, for instance, childcare takes up one third of net household income for single parents.

Singles and online dating

As social distancing measures were being taken to contain the spread of COVID-19 all over the world, meeting new people became much more difficult for singles. This resulted in a boom of online dating services, an industry whose revenue were already on the rise. Tinder, the most popular dating app in the world, was downloaded more than six million times in January 2021 alone. A growing market in this sense is the Asian one: according to the Statista Global Consumer Survey, in China as much as 19 percent of the adult population was using online dating.

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