Belgium has 5.1 million private households, of which 1.8 million are now composed of just one person, data published by Statbel, Belgium’s statistics office, revealed on Thursday.
Over a third (36%) of households are now comprised of just one person. Married couples with or without children account for 37% of Belgian households, and unmarried couples without or without children represent 15%.
The Brussels Region has the highest share of single occupant households, with nearly half (47%) of residents living alone without children or a partner. In total, 270,891 Brussels residents live alone. In Flanders, 33.1% live alone and 37.2% live alone in Wallonia.
In the capital, residents typically get married and start families at a much later age than in other regions of the country. In Brussels, women usually have their first child at 32 years old, up from 29 years of age in 1998.
Flanders is the region with the most married couples with children. Around a fifth of Flemish families have children, against 17.9% in Brussels, and 16.8% in Wallonia.
Single-parent families are most common in Wallonia. Around one in eight households are composed of a single parent and children in the Walloon Region, against around one in ten in Brussels and just 8% in Flanders.
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in both married couples with and without children. Between 2013 and 2023, unmarried couples with children increased by 38.5% and without children by 32.%.
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Other non-traditional households are also on the rise. Single-parent families are now 9% more common. Married couples are increasingly rare as other forms of household become more popular. There are now 10.5% less married couples with children, and 1.9% less married couples without children.
In Belgium, nearly half of marriages end up in divorce, one of the highest rates in the EU. For every 100 recorded marriages, there are just over 50 divorces. The statistics are most extreme in Portugal, where there are 91.5 divorces for every 100 marriages.
