The increase in 1-person households is correlated with other social phenomena and trends, such as individualism, the increase in social connections due to the advent of SNS, and the active economic activity of women. These social and economic factors are so complex and diverse that it is impossible to explain them individually, but in conclusion, countries, and cities with higher income tend to have more 1-person households.
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/
The increase in single-person households is not only a social change but also affects the supply and demand for residential space. Compared to these rapid changes in trends, the physical living spaces of the cities we live in are slow to adapt to the changes. For example, the current residential space designs are tailored to the lifestyle of the multi-generational (i.e., baby boomer generation). Hence, there are challenges to supporting the trend of 1-person households. Before answering how we should form cities to adopt these changes, we should first look at where single-person households are now distributed in the United States. Therefore, our Market Stadium team will take a look at the correlation between the distribution of single-person households and the high-tech jobs as a continued post from the previous. Since this post will examine the relationship between high-tech jobs and single-person households, we analyzed the population aged 15-54, which is the working-age population.
First of all, as of 2020, the 1-person household MSA Top 20 rankings are as follows. New York-Newark-Jersey City had the most with 774,091, followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim with 481,486 and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin with 442,061.
Figure 1. the number of 1-person households in the top 20 MSA
- New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA- Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA- Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI- Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX- Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV- Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX- Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA- Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD- Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL- Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI- Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA- Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH- Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ- San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA- Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI- Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO- Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL- St. Louis, MO-IL- Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD- San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CAMeanwhile, among all households aged 15-54, the highest proportion of single-person households was as follows. In Champaign-Urbana in IL, out of 90,247 households, 19,046 had the highest 1-person household at 21.10%. After that, College Station-Bryan in TX took second place with 17,243 of the total number of households of 94,295, with 18.29%.
Figure 2. 1-person household ratio in top 20 MSA
- Champaign-Urbana, IL- College Station-Bryan, TX- Gainesville, FL- Bloomington, IN- Columbia, MO- Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX- Madison, WI- Ann Arbor, MI- Fayetteville, NC- Tallahassee, FL- Greenville, NC- Boulder, CO- Athens-Clarke County, GA- Bloomington, IL- New Orleans-Metairie, LA- Durham-Chapel Hill, NC- Memphis, TN-MS-AR- Huntsville, AL- Toledo, OH- Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GATwo cities, which were in the two top 20 lists, are as follows:
Figure 3. MSA in both number and proportion in the top 20
- Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA- Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TXHaving said that, is there a relationship between occupation and distribution of single-person households? Following the last post, we performed a regression analysis on the number of single-person households and the number of high-tech job postings in the zip code unit to examine the correlation between high-tech job postings and the number of single-person households. Since the data is left-skewed, both variables are taking the log.
Figure 4. the number of high-tech jobs (left: raw, right: logged)
Figure 5. the number of 1-person households in zip code
As a result of the analysis, the statistical explanation power was 0.931 (R2), and the p-value was strongly significant at 0.000 indicating a positive relationship between the number of high-tech job postings and the number of 1-person households.
Figure 6. relationship between 1-person household and high-tech jobs
Table 1. OLS Regression Results ( 1-person household and Hightech jobs )
You can find the information and analysis in Marketstadium. Job posting data is updated quarterly.