One in five people in Germany lives alone - figures

Some 17.3 million people in Germany lived alone last year, equivalent to roughly one in five of the population (20.9%), the Federal Statistical Office said on Wednesday.

The figure is broadly in line with 2024, when 17.4 million people lived alone. However, the number has risen sharply over the past 20 years, by 22.3%. In 2005, just under 14.2 million people in Germany lived alone, accounting for 17.3% of the population at the time.

For sociologist Alexander Langenkamp of Goethe University Frankfurt, this is not a "singularly negative development." People today are generally more able to afford to live alone, he said, with women in particular benefiting from this trend.

"But there are also some mechanisms that are problematic, for example in large cities where most people live alone," the expert said. In those cities, the housing market had developed strongly in the direction of available flats being more suited to very small households, he added.

"The larger the place of residence, the higher the proportion of people living alone," the statisticians also noted.

In cities with more than 100,000 residents, just over a quarter (25.9%) of the population lived alone in 2025. In medium-sized municipalities with between 20,000 and 100,000 residents, the proportion was around one in five (20.6%). In small towns with fewer than 20,000 residents, the proportion was lowest at 17.2%.

Older people in particular often live alone. In the 65-and-over age group, just over one in three people (34.4%) lived alone last year, the statisticians said. Among those aged 85 and over, the figure was more than half (55.8%).

"But even among young adults between 25 and 34, the proportion was above average at 28.7%," the office said. Women (21.5%) lived alone slightly more often than men (20.4%).

The fact that the very elderly lived alone particularly often was simply down to demographics, the sociologist said. "And especially in the 85-plus group, a large number of women live alone because they have a higher life expectancy than their husbands."

Among young people, by contrast, it was a transitional phase: They had moved out of their parents' home and were studying or in training before potentially moving in with a partner.

Germany's proportion of people living alone is well above the EU average, which stood at just 16.5% last year, the Federal Statistical Office said.

"In particular, relatively wealthy states with a well-developed social security system have more people living alone," Langenkamp said, adding that living alone was something people needed to be able to afford.

According to EU statistics agency Eurostat, only five northern and north-eastern European countries had a higher proportion of people living alone than Germany: Lithuania (31%), Finland (26%), Denmark (24%) and Estonia and Sweden (22% each). The lowest figures were recorded in Slovakia (3%), Ireland (8%) and Poland (9%).

The sociologist also stressed that living alone and loneliness were two quite separate things. "Put simply: loneliness is the feeling, living alone is the state," he said. It was entirely possible to feel lonely in a relationship, or to live alone and be happy.