Across the rich world, fewer people are dating, cohabiting or marrying. In America 41% of women and 50% of men aged 25-34 were single in 2023, a share that has doubled over the past five decades. Between 2010 and 2022 the share of people living alone rose in 26 of the 30 members of the OECD. Marriage rates are falling across much of Asia, including in China, India and especially Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In Europe each new generation is less likely to be married or living with a partner than previous ones at the same age.
Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University, has found that the covid-19 pandemic produced 13.7m more singles in America in 2022 than if the singlehood rate had stayed at the level of 2017. The Economist estimates that over the past decade such effects have swollen the ranks of single people around the world by at least 100m.
In East Asia, where singlehood is growing fastest, structural and cultural forces are increasing incompatibility between the sexes. China's one-child policy has created a huge imbalance: the country will have 119 men for every 100 women of peak marriageable age by 2027, with some 30m-50m "excess men", according to Xiaoling Shu of the University of California, Davis. Singlehood there is disproportionately concentrated among poorer, less-educated men and among highly educated women. Sex-selective abortions in India resulted in 111 boys being born for every 100 girls in 2011, according to census data; The Economist calculates that around 20m more boys than girls were born in India in 2000-15.
Improved opportunities for women in education and the workplace are also fuelling singlehood. As women gain financial independence, they no longer need a husband to support them and face high opportunity costs from marriage, since patriarchal cultures still expect them to shoulder most domestic and caring responsibilities, argues Wei-Jun Jean Yeung of the National University of Singapore.
In South Korea around half of young men think they are discriminated against (other than having to do military service, they are not). Some 60% complain that feminism demeans them. They also tend to do little housework.
Until roughly the mid-20th century, far more men went to university than women. More recently, women have surpassed men. Across the OECD on average 51% of women aged 25-34 had a university degree in 2019, compared with 39% of men. Highly educated women who still expect to marry up struggle to find enough candidates. Research in Germany found that highly educated women over 30 were more likely to remain single than settle for a man with less education. Albert Esteve, the director of the Centre for Demographic Studies in Barcelona, has found that where educated women do couple with less-educated men, they tend to pick those who earn more—switching from one form of marrying up to another. A study in Australia found that men who earn less than their female partners are more likely to beat or berate them.
For about 60 years after the second world war, the most common way heterosexual couples in America met was through friends. After the introduction of smartphones in the late 2000s, the proportion who met online surged; in 2013 it became the most common way for couples to get together, according to a study by Michael Rosenfeld and colleagues. Online dating has turbo-charged pickiness, allowing people to filter for attributes such as political views, height and weight, as well as religion, ethnicity and education. Most women on Bumble, an online dating app, screen out all men under six feet tall, according to the Wall Street Journal, ruling out about 85% of men.
Social media promotes unrealistic ideals: the "manosphere" encourages young men towards hyper-masculinity, while some women vet potential dates on private forums where others post the names and pictures of men alleged to have cheated or been abusive. In America the amount of time 15-to-24-year-olds spend hanging out face-to-face has fallen by more than a quarter over the past decade, while time spent gaming has increased by about half (and nearly doubled for young men).
Almost everywhere in the rich world people are having sex less often. Brits aged 18-44 went from copulating five times a month in 1990 to twice a month in 2021, according to Soazig Clifton of University College London.
In Japan and South Korea, only 2-4% of babies are born to unmarried mothers, meaning that rising singlehood has a particularly severe effect on fertility rates. Worldwide, the rise of singlehood acts as a further drag on already slowing birth rates. It also increases demand for housing (as more people live alone) and shifts government spending away from maternity wards and schools and, in time, towards care homes.
A study of singles in 14 countries found that only 40% said they were "not interested in being in a relationship". Surveys in various countries suggest that 60-73% of singletons would rather be in a relationship. In a Pew Research Centre survey of single Americans in 2019, 50% were not actively looking for a partner, but only 27% said this was because they enjoyed being single. In Finland and Sweden roughly a third of adults live alone.
A striking 7% of young singles say they would consider a romance with an AI companion, and such lovebots will only grow more sophisticated.
Death is only a state of mind. Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.