Families and households in the UK: 2022

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Families and households in the UK: 2022

18 May 2023

Today, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published Families and households in the UK: 2022.

This release details Labour Force Survey (LFS) trends in living arrangements including families (with or without dependent children), people living alone and people in shared accommodation broken down by size and type of household.

The main findings from the analysis presented in this bulletin include:

  • In 2022, there were 19.4 million families in the UK, an increase of just over 1 million families (5.7%) in the decade since 2012. 
  • In 2022, 43% of families (8.3 million) had no children living within them, 42% had one or more dependent children (8.2 million) and 15% had only non-dependent children (2.9 million). 
  • Married or civil partnered couple families accounted for the majority of families in 2022 (66%), while cohabiting couple families accounted for almost 1 in 5 families (18%) and lone parent families accounted for the remaining 15%. 
  • The majority of the 2.9 million lone parent families in 2022 were headed by a lone mother (2.5 million, 84%), with lone fathers now accounting for 16% (457,000) of lone parent families. 
  • There were an estimated 28.2 million households in the UK in 2022, an increase of 6.1% (1.6 million) since 2012; most (2 in 3) households consist of one family, either a couple family with or without children (57%) or a lone parent family (10%) 
  • The number of people living alone in the UK in 2022 was 8.3 million, this represents 13% of the household population and 30% of all households; the majority (53%) of these households were women living alone. 

Link to bulletin

Rich Pereira

Rich Pereira is head of Demography. You can follow Rich on Twitter for the latest in population statistics news: @RichPereira_ONS.

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