Living alone. Households of one become the most common type; everything sized for families is re-sized for one.
Mature Already large; the question is how it resolves, not whether it happens. Largest effect expected 2010–2040.
Second-order effects
Smaller dwellings, single-serve food, solo travel, and a doubled per-capita demand for appliances and furniture; a thinner safety net when illness or job loss strikes; the market for company grows at every phase.
Its neighbourhood
Everything this entry connects to directly. Click any point to follow it.
Frictions it intensifies
These pressures get worse, or reach more people.
- Friends scatter after school; rebuild a social world from zero
- Friends and spouse begin to die
- Cannot leave the house; the world stops coming
- Household collapses if an earner dies or is disabled
- Illness or injury can arrive on any day of any phase
- Why any of this
- Fill the hours that work and care do not
- Two people must eat together, every day
Solutions it accelerates
Solutions it threatens
Sectors it reshapes
How to track it
If this trend is real, these are the numbers that will show it first.