Thursday, November 4th, 2021
Single parents badly affected
Millions of Germans have too little living space
According to the European definition, those who live alone need at least a two-room apartment. Otherwise the living space is considered to be cramped. Unfortunately, this applies to millions of Germans. Single parents are particularly badly affected.
Around 8.5 million people in Germany have too little living space. Last year, 10.3 percent of the population lived in apartments that are considered overcrowded according to the European definition, as reported by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. People in cities, people living alone as well as single parents and their children were affected more than average.
An apartment is considered overcrowded if it has too few rooms in relation to the number of people. This applied to 16.4 percent of minors in Germany in 2020. This makes them the age group that most often lives too cramped. Adults between 18 and 64 years of age, with a share of eleven percent, were slightly above the average for the population as a whole. In contrast, only three percent of those 65 and over lived too cramped.
Every seventh person in the city has too little living space
According to the European definition, a one-person household must have at least two rooms, such as a living room and a bedroom, so that the apartment is not considered overcrowded. The overcrowding rate in German cities was therefore particularly high. A good one in seven (15 percent) had too little living space available here. In small towns and suburbs, on the other hand, only about half as many people were affected, with 7.9 percent living in overcrowded apartments. In rural areas, this only affected 5.8 percent of the population.
A total of 13 percent of those living alone lived in too cramped conditions, for example in one-room apartments. In contrast, only 2.4 percent of people in households with two adults lived in overcrowded apartments. The overcrowding rate for single parents was highest among households with children – 29.9 percent of single parents and their children had too little living space. In contrast, only 7.3 percent of households with two adults and one child and eight percent of households with two adults and two children lived in such circumstances.
In an EU comparison, the overcrowding rates were highest in Romania and Latvia at 45.1 percent and 42.5 percent, respectively. The island states of Cyprus (2.5 percent) and Malta (4.2 percent), on the other hand, had the least to contend with overcrowding in the EU in 2020.