How Many Seniors Live Alone? Solo Aging Statistics, by State

Solo aging by the numbers

Each figure below comes from a federal survey or a peer-reviewed study, with the year it describes. The first six rows are our own calculation from the Census Bureau’s 2025 American Community Survey, released in 2026; the method is at the bottom of this page.

Is the number of seniors living alone going up?

The count is. The rate isn’t. The Census Bureau’s survey counted 14.4 million people 65 and older living alone in 2021 and 16.7 million in 2025, yet the share sat at 25.7% and then 25.8%. Over a longer stretch the share has fallen: Pew Research Center’s analysis of census data puts it at 29% in 1990 and 26% in 2023.

The drop is all on the women’s side. Pew found 38% of women 65 and older lived alone in 1990 and 31% in 2023, while men moved the other way, from 15% to 19%. Pew ties it to longer lives: with men living longer, fewer older women are widowed early, and more of them still have a husband at home.

So a headline about “record numbers of seniors living alone” is right about the number and wrong about the trend it implies. Living alone in old age isn’t spreading. There are more people over 65 every year, and about 1 in 4 of them lives this way, as they have for decades. What is changing is who stands behind them: the next group of older adults is more likely to have no children at all.

Why you'll also see “nearly 3 in 10”

The Census Bureau publishes living-alone figures from two different surveys. A May 2024 Census story, based on the smaller Current Population Survey, put it at nearly 3 in 10 adults 65 and older in 2022. The American Community Survey used on this page is large enough to give a reliable figure for every state, and it counts all 64.8 million people 65 and older, including about 1.8 million in nursing homes and other group quarters. Leave those 1.8 million out and the ACS share is 26.5%.

If you’re quoting one, name the survey and the year, and don’t mix them in the same sentence.

Aging alone is mostly a women's story

Of the 16.7 million people 65 and older who live alone, 11.0 million are women and 5.7 million are men. Among women 65 and older, 30.7% live alone; among men, 19.7%. More than half of women 65 and up (51.9%) are widowed, divorced or never married, against 30.8% of men, and widowhood is the biggest piece of that gap: 27.8% of older women are widows, compared with 10.1% of older men.

Set that beside the federal estimate of how long people need care. Women need it for an average of 3.7 years and men for 2.2. The group that needs care the longest is the same group most likely to be living alone.

Living alone isn't the same as having no one

Plenty of people who live alone have a daughter twenty minutes away. The harder number is who has no family to call on. It’s smaller, and it’s growing.

• 16.5% of adults 55 and older have no children, about 15.2 million people (Census Bureau, 2018 data, the newest it has published on this).
• The younger the group, the higher it runs. 19.6% of people 55 to 64 are childless, against 15.9% at 65 to 74 and 10.9% at 75 and older. The people now nearing retirement will reach old age with more of them childless than the generation ahead of them.
• 27.7% of older adults who live alone have no children (adults 55 and older, 2018).
• 6.6% of adults 55 and older have no living spouse and no biological children, and 1% have no spouse or partner, children, siblings or living parents (Margolis & Verdery, Health and Retirement Study, 1998–2010).
• About 2.6% of older adults are “elder orphans”: living in the community, isolated, with no caregiver or surrogate. Another 21.3% are at risk (Roofeh et al., 2020).

If you’ve read that “22% of older Americans are elder orphans,” that’s the at-risk group quoted as if it were the real one. Our elder orphans page traces it back to the paper.

Seniors living alone, by state

By headcount, the biggest states lead: California (1.47 million people 65+ living alone), Florida (1.28 million), Texas (1.09 million) and New York (1.07 million). By share, the Midwest runs highest (Ohio 29.9%, Iowa 29.8%) and the West runs lowest (Hawaii 19.6%, Utah 20.6%, California 21.3%). Florida, for all its retirees, sits below the national rate at 23.8%. Washington, D.C., a city rather than a state, is the outlier at 41.7%.

Read the ± column before ranking. North Dakota’s 30.5% ± 2.0 could be anywhere from 28.5% to 32.5%, so treat states within a point or two of each other as tied.

What the numbers mean if you're one of them

Living alone isn’t the risk. The risk is the three jobs a spouse or an adult child does without being asked, which nobody does for you unless you’ve set it up.

1. Someone who notices. If you fell on a Tuesday, who would know by Wednesday? A daily check-in with a friend, or a free call program run by your county, closes that gap. Help for seniors living alone lists the free ones.
2. Someone who can sign. A health care proxy and a durable financial power of attorney name the person who decides when you can’t. Name no one and a hospital or a court decides who it is. Who can be your power of attorney if you have no family covers friends and paid fiduciaries.
3. A way to pay for care. Almost 70% of people turning 65 will need some long-term care, and Medicare doesn’t pay for long-term care. In 2025 a home caregiver cost a median $35 an hour and assisted living $74,400 a year (CareScout). Who will take care of me when I’m old walks through who pays.

All three in order, with a backup named for each role: the solo aging plan.

How we got these numbers

• Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2025 1-year estimates, detailed tables B09020 (relationship and living alone, people 65 and older) and B12002 (marital status by sex and age), read from the Census Bureau’s public summary files on October 29, 2026. The 2021 comparison uses the same table from the 2021 survey.
• Living alone is men plus women 65 and older who are householders living alone. Share divides that by all people 65 and older, including those in nursing homes and other group quarters.
• Women’s and men’s rates divide each sex’s living-alone count (B09020) by that sex’s 65+ total (B12002). Both tables come from the same survey and year and agree on the 64.8 million total.
• Margins of error are 90% intervals, computed with the Census Bureau’s formulas for sums and proportions.
• Every other figure is quoted as its source published it, with its own year. We don’t add together numbers from different surveys.

We’ll rerun this when the Census Bureau releases the next year of the survey.

Your one thing this week

Write down the name of the one person who’d notice if you didn’t answer your phone for two days, then tell them they’re that person. If no name comes to mind, start with a free daily check-in while you work out the rest.

Keep reading

• What Is an Elder Orphan? The Definition, the Real Numbers, and What to Do — No spouse, no kids, no one to call? What “elder orphan” actually means, the verified numbers behind it, what legally happens if you name no one — and the first three things to put in writing.
• Help for Seniors Living Alone: Daily Check-Ins, Free Services and Who to Call — Living alone? The free daily check-in calls, the meal delivery that doubles as a wellness visit, and the one number that finds both near you.
• Who Will Take Care of Me When I'm Old If I Don't Have Kids? — Mostly people you pay and people you named in writing. What care cost in 2025, who arranges it when nobody's coming, and the three moves to make now.
• Solo Aging: How to Plan for Aging Without a Spouse or Kids — Aging without a spouse or kids? A step-by-step plan — care network, the four legal documents, who decides if you can't, and how to fund a solo old age.