Editor's note
Jim Walker is the Executive Director of the Big Car Collaborative in Indianapolis. Unlike other arts organizations, the Collaborative is a comprehensive program focused on developing artists and their involvement with their community. For details listen to Who Gets What? at mortonjohn.libsyn.com.
When Gilbert O’Sullivan (no relation to Gilbert and Sullivan) wrote his 1972 lament, “Alone again, naturally,” being alone was not anywhere as popular as it is today. Back then, about 17% of American households were occupied by just one person. Today, that figure is closing in on 30%. Where, in the early ‘70s, we saw 10 million single person households, now we’re pressing 40 million.

Many factors have combined to make living alone more common than in the ‘70s. Longer life for surviving spouses. More divorced people. High incomes for select occupations filled by young people. They all are evidence of a more prosperous economy with higher real wages supplemented by pensions, life insurance, social security, more liberal mortgage policies, increased female labor force participation, and adults of all ages accustomed to more square footage than enjoyed by previous generations.

We may imagine the diverse lives of those living alone. For some it is a golden time of freedom and exploration. For others it is a daily grind in a pit of desperation. It is a feature of our movies, songs, and fiction, a persistent reality in advertising, but it fails to register on our collective thoughts of American life or our anticipation of our future society.

Americans complain of a housing shortage without acknowledging the fact that 14% of the population 18 and older occupies 28% of all housing units. In Indiana, that’s 16% of the relevant population using 29% of our housing.

This living alone phenomenon has increased every year since 1960. From 2012 through 2022, occupied housing units increased by 12% while the number of persons living alone increased by 15%. That’s a gap of only 3%, but in New Mexico the gap was 14% (11% vs 25%). Indiana ranked 12th with a gap of 7%, more than twice that of the nation In all, 44 of the 50 states saw persons living alone increasing faster than did the number of housing units...

The percent of the population living alone is highest for those 65 and older, 27% in the U.S. and 29% in Indiana. In both the U.S. and Indiana, this oldest group is just 6% of those 18+, but they occupy close to 12% of the housing.

Among those 65+, five diverse Indiana counties (Switzerland, St. Joseph, Knox, Huntington, and Marion) have more than a third of their seniors living alone. In Switzerland County, 9% of the population occupies 18% of the housing units, yielding the largest gap in the state of 9%. Hamilton County is at the opposite end of the spectrum, with 4% of its 18+ population using 8% of the housing, the lowest gap in the state at 4%.

Do we want to (Should we) do anything about those living alone disproportionately occupying housing? Are these inequalities inequities?
Morton J. Marcus is an economist formerly with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His column appears in Indiana newspapers, and his views can be followed his podcast.

© 2024 Morton J. Marcus

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