More living solo than ever before

Thanks in part to high rates of divorce, an unprecedented one-in-six adult Canadians are now living alone, according to new research by Statistics Canada.

“The number of persons living alone in Canada more than doubled over the last 35 years, from 1.7 million in 1981 to 4.0 million in 2016,” reads a special report grappling with the phenomenon of spiking rates of Canadians without roommates, spouses or live-in romantic partners.

Single person households are now the most common household type in Canada — the first time in recorded Canadian history this has been the case.

Previously, from 1867 to the time of the 2016 census, Canada’s most common household type had been one filled with a family.

The solo-living shift has been most dramatic in Quebec, where 18 per cent of the over-15 population is now living alone, according to 2016 census data.

Divorce appears to be one of the main reasons for the spike. Since 1981, men aged 35 to 64 were most likely to have taken up solo living, largely because they had gone through a divorce where their ex-wife retained custody of any children.

Millennials were also bunking alone in increasing numbers, in part because so many of them are living in what Statistics Canada confusingly deems “Living Apart Together” (LAT) relationships; essentially, a long-distance relationship. The classic example of an LAT is “Oil Sands Widows,” a phenomenon most common to Newfoundland and Labrador, describing women whose husbands are working in Fort Mcmurray for long periods.

With fewer millennials capitalizing on the cost savings of shared bathrooms and kitchens, however, it was exacerbating an already overheated market for real estate. Among millennial solo-dwellers, 48 per cent were paying more than a third of their income on housing costs, a share that Statistics Canada characterizes as “unaffordable.”

“As living alone comes to represent the situation of an increasingly large segment of the Canadian population, housing demands and affordability issues associated with this lifestyle may grow in importance within society,” wrote Statistics Canada.

Surprisingly, seniors are actually living alone less than in 1981. The over-65 crowd continues to live alone in disproportionately high numbers (26 per cent of them were solo dwellers in 2016), but the rate has gone down in large part because men are living longer.

The modern Canadian woman can still expect to live about four years longer than the average Canadian man, but in the 1970s this gap was as high as 7.4 years. As men are living longer, their wives are spending less time as widows.

However, when their husbands do die, widows do remain the best at living alone. Among senior women living solo, 72 per cent reported high levels of life satisfaction, the highest of any other solo dwellers.

Across the board, solo dwellers are generally less happy and satisfied than those living with others. However, Statistics Canada cautions about inferring that people are necessarily unhappier because they are alone, rather than the other way around.

“Other correlated characteristics such as age, marital status, economic situation and cultural setting may play a more instrumental role in an individual’s well-being than their specific living arrangement,” it wrote.