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Data

Share of single-parent households

See all data and research on:
Marriages & Divorces

About this data

Share of single-parent households
Percentage of households comprised of a single parent and his or her children (biological, step, and adopted/foster children), irrespective of children’s ages, and no one else
Source
United Nations (2022) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 31, 2024
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
1960–2021
Unit
%

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Marriages and Divorces by Our World in Data

Marriages and Divorces

Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

United Nations – Household Size and Composition

This database presents a compilation of indicators on household size and membership composition around the world, estimated using both tabulated data and household roster micro-data from censuses and household surveys. The estimates are based on 1,059 unique data sources from 196 countries or areas, representing approximately 98 per cent of the world’s population in 2022, with reference dates ranging from 1960 to 2021. The 2022 database includes estimates from 209 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), representing 98 countries or areas, which were not available in the previous versions.

Standard estimation procedures were used to ensure comparability of the estimates between countries and over time.

Retrieved on
December 31, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/data/household-size-and-composition
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022).  Database on Household Size and Composition 2022.

This database presents a compilation of indicators on household size and membership composition around the world, estimated using both tabulated data and household roster micro-data from censuses and household surveys. The estimates are based on 1,059 unique data sources from 196 countries or areas, representing approximately 98 per cent of the world’s population in 2022, with reference dates ranging from 1960 to 2021. The 2022 database includes estimates from 209 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), representing 98 countries or areas, which were not available in the previous versions.

Standard estimation procedures were used to ensure comparability of the estimates between countries and over time.

Retrieved on
December 31, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/data/household-size-and-composition
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022).  Database on Household Size and Composition 2022.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

The UN's country profiles show different household subtypes across years because their data sources use varying classification systems. For example, in the US, one of the data sources categorizes households that include extended families and non-relatives, whereas another source appears to classify these households as "unknown." As a result, when the total share of household types does not sum to 100%, we assign the remaining share as "unknown."

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of single-parent households”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2020) - “Marriages and Divorces”. Data adapted from United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United Nations (2022) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

United Nations (2022) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of single-parent households” [dataset]. United Nations, “Household Size and Composition” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-single-parent-households.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear