Household Projections for Scotland, 2010-based

Main Points

This report presents forward projections for the number of households in Scotland up to 2035, based on the estimated population of Scotland in mid-2010.

Change in Scotland's Households

Between 2010 and 2035, the number of households in Scotland is projected to increase by 23 per cent to 2.89 million - an average of 21,230 additional households per year.
Over the same period, Scotland's population is projected to increase by 10 per cent. Most of the projected increase in households is, therefore, the result of more people living alone or in smaller households. The average household size is projected to decrease from 2.17 people in 2010 to 1.95 people in 2035.
Scotland's population is ageing, with a projected increase of 63 per cent in the number of people in older age groups (65+) while the projected increase in children (aged zero to fifteen) is only three per cent, and the population aged between 16 and 64 is projected to decrease by just over one per cent. This has an impact on household structure, as children tend to live in larger households and older people in smaller ones.

Household Type in Scotland

There is a large projected increase in households containing just one adult, from 863,000 (37 per cent of all households) in 2010 to over 1.29 million (45 per cent) in 2035. There are also projected increases in other smaller households. Households containing just two adults without children are projected to rise from 719,000 to 884,000 households, although 31 per cent of all households are two adult households in each year of projection. The number of households containing one adult with children is projected to rise from seven per cent of all households (166,000 households) in 2010 to nine per cent (249,000 households) in 2035.
In contrast, the number of larger households is projected to fall, with households containing two or more adults with children decreasing from 420,000 households (18 per cent of all households) to 324,000 households (11 per cent) by 2035. There is also a projected decrease in the number of households containing three or more adults, from 190,000 (eight per cent) to 143,000 (five per cent).

Age of Head of Household in Scotland

There are projected increases in the numbers of households headed by people in almost all age groups. The greatest increases are seen in households headed by people aged 65 or over, which are projected to increase by 58 per cent between 2010 and 2035, to 954,000 households. In contrast households headed by someone aged under 65 are projected to increase by just 10 per cent, to around 1.93 million. The number of households headed by someone aged 85 or over is projected to more than double from 76,000 to 198,000 households.
Older people tend to live in smaller households. By 2035 there are projected to be 352,000 women aged 65 and over living alone and 168,000 men, increases of 50 per cent and 90 per cent respectively. Increases are particularly large in the oldest age groups (85+) where the numbers of women and men living alone increase by 158 and 216 per cent respectively. In 2035, 77 per cent of the oldest women and 38 per cent of the oldest men are projected to live alone. The number of two adult households headed by someone 65 or over is projected to increase by 60 per cent, to 393,000 households by 2035, with the number headed by someone 85 or over more than doubling to over 30,000 households.

Local Authority Figures

The largest projected increases in the number of households between 2010 and 2035 are in City of Edinburgh and Perth and Kinross (43 per cent each). Increases of 30 per cent or over are also seen in Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, East Lothian, Stirling and West Lothian. In contrast, the number of households in Inverclyde is projected to decrease by six per cent between 2010 and 2035.

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