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The Number of Thirty-Somethings Living as Couples Has Halved in Half a Century

The Number of Thirty-Somethings Living as Couples Has Halved in Half a Century

This is due to the significant delay in the age of emancipation, but also because fewer people are moving out to start a family, according to Funcas.

Alfonso Torices

Madrid

Lunes, 3 de febrero 2025, 13:55

Spanish individuals in their thirties living as couples today are half the number they were just fifty years ago, according to a study by Funcas, the socio-economic research centre of savings banks. Experts attribute this trend, particularly noticeable in recent years, partly to the increasingly late age at which young people become independent, but also to other factors related to changing customs and lifestyles, such as fewer people moving out to start a family.

In Spain, by the end of 2022, the latest complete census data showed that 43% of women aged 30 to 34 and 32% of men of the same age lived with their partners. According to Funcas, these are the lowest figures in the last half-century, far from the reality of 1970, when 85% of women and 81% of men in this age group lived with their partners.

"This decline in young Spaniards living as couples has been occurring since the 1980s, but it has intensified in the last fifteen years. An experience that was traditionally common to the vast majority of young people around the age of 30 is now clearly a minority," these experts explain.

A significant part of the decline in households with couples is explained by the continued delay in the age of emancipation, driven by unemployment and youth job insecurity, and above all, by the excessive rise in housing and rental prices. The percentage of young people not emancipated has increased from 18% of women aged 30 to 34 three decades ago, in 1991, to 31% in 2022. The decline is from 26% to 44% for men of the same age. In both cases, almost double. The Spanish percentage of young people not emancipated is one of the highest in the European Union.

However, the sharp decline in young couples in Spain and the delay in family formation, a widespread phenomenon in all developed countries, is not only explained by the great difficulties in becoming independent but also by broader cultural changes. The data shows, in fact, that in Spain there are at least two factors that reduce the percentage of early family households.

Two Trends

One of these trends is the growing proportion of young people who, when they become independent, live alone. Among Spanish women aged 30 to 34, the proportion has increased fivefold in three decades, from 2% in 1991 to 10% in 2022. Among men, the percentage has quadrupled, from 3% to 13%. This growth occurred mainly in the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21st, but since 2011 the proportion of young people living alone has remained relatively stable.

The second factor is the increase in the proportion of those living with their children but not with a partner. Single-parent households have doubled in many cases over the last three decades. For women aged 30 to 35, who most commonly use this arrangement, the figure has risen from 5% in 1991 to 10% in 2022.

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