More Americans are choosing to live alone, and Arlington and Alexandria are among the cities where this change is most dramatic, according to a new report from financial company SmartAsset.
SmartAsset compared household data from 342 of the largest cities in the U.S. and compared the number of single-person households between 2016 and 2021. It found that Arlington and Alexandria are the two cities where the rate of single people living alone increased the most.
In terms of cities with the largest single populations, Alexandria is third. Its single population across both men and women is 46.52 percent. Back in 2016, it was 15.61 percent. SmartAsset said the “proportion of bachelor and bachelorette households roughly tripled.” Alexandria is behind DC and St. Louis. DC takes the No. 1 spot for singles with 48.23 percent, followed by St. Louis, at 47.49 percent. Richmond comes in fourth for singles, with 46.23 percent of the population single.
Arlington saw the sharpest spike in single-person households, jumping from 11 percent to 41 percent between 2016 and 2021. Bachelors make up 15.85 percent of Arlington’s households.
And many of these households are single women. In the DC area, more than 25 percent of households are single women. In Alexandria specifically, that number is 26.23 percent. In Richmond, single women make up 28 percent of households.
Nationally, the rate of single people living alone is 28 percent, up from 24 percent in 2016.
As part of its study, SmartAsset looked at 342 areas with populations over 100,000 as of 2021. The data comes from U.S. Census Bureau surveys in 2021 and 2016.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
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