In 2022, these made up 18% of all families (3.6 million opposite-sex cohabiting couple families), an increase from 16% of all families (2.9 million) in 2012. 'Opposite-sex cohabiting couple' was the fastest growing family type over the last 10 years.

Since 2012, the number of married-couple families has increased from 12.3 million, however this family type has been generally declining as a proportion of all families over time (67% in 2012). Married-couple families remain the most common type of family in 2022 (12.7 million), accounting for 65% of all families. Opposite-sex civil partnerships have been available since 2019.ĭownload this chart Figure 1: Opposite-sex cohabiting couple families have increased as a proportion of all families over the last decade Image The civil partner couple families category includes both opposite-sex and same-sex couples in 2022.Same-sex marriages have been available since 2014. Married couple families include both opposite-sex married couples and same-sex married couples in 2022.The number of people living alone in the UK in 2022 was 8.3 million, this represents 13% of the household population and 30% of all households the majority (53%) of these households were women living alone. There were an estimated 28.2 million households in the UK in 2022, an increase of 6.1% (1.6 million) since 2012 most (2 in 3) households consist of one family, either a couple family with or without children (57%) or a lone-parent family (10%). The majority of the 2.9 million lone-parent families in 2022 were headed by a lone mother (2.5 million, 84%), with lone fathers now accounting for 16% (457,000) of lone-parent families.

Married or civil-partnered couple families accounted for the majority of families in 2022 (66%), while cohabiting-couple families accounted for almost 1 in 5 families (19%) and lone-parent families accounted for the remaining 15%. In 2022, 43% of families (8.3 million) had no children living within them, 42% had one or more dependent children (8.2 million) and 15% had only non-dependent children (2.9 million).

In 2022, there were 19.4 million families in the UK, an increase of just over 1 million families (5.7%) in the decade since 2012.

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