Cohabiting couples are the fastest growing family type in the UK.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), there are around 3.2 million unmarried couples living together this year. In 2010, the ONS predicted that there would be 3.3 million cohabiting couples by 2033, but three years later there were already 3 million.
Despite this rapid growth, the newly published figures also revealed that out of 18.7 million families, the majority included a married couple or a civil partnership. There were 12.5 million such families, including those without dependent children. Although civil partnerships were included, there were only 48,000 this year. This represents a significant decline over the last few years. Civil partnerships have been falling since 2012, when there were 67,000 partnerships in the country.
In total, there were 27 million households in the UK this year. Of those, 35 per cent were “two person households”. The ONS reports that there were 7.7 million people living alone in 2015.
There was also a significant number of young adults who have yet to leave home or start a family: 40 per cent of Britons between the ages of 15 and 34 still lived with their parents this year, the ONS reports.
For a full breakdown of the ONS figures, click here.
[…] responded to recently published figures from the Office for National statistics which revealed that cohabiting couples are the fastest growing family type in the UK. There are roughly 3.2 million of such couples in the country this year. This represents […]