Loneliness seems the inevitable conclusion of several things. First of all, there’s the growth in one-person households across developed countries. In all OECD countries for which projections are available, the number is expected to increase. By 2030, they will account for more than a quarter in the US, New Zealand, Australia, and around two-fifths in Japan, England, Austria, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France. In 2016, one-third of households in the European Union were made up of just one person, and more than one half in Sweden, the current capital of singleton life.
This is partly due to demographics — as the babyboomer generation ages, more older people are living alone. But it’s also due to longer-term social changes, as people choose to marry later, or not at all, more marriages end in divorce, and the birth rate drops. The American Housing Survey found that single-person households were split across all age groups, millennials, gen-Xers and babyboomers alike.