The power of one
Happy Singles’ Day! It might be less an empowering celebration of singledom and more an excuse to sell stuff, but with an increasingly small proportion of people choosing not to settle down or have children, the rise of the solo economy is real. Let’s take a Deep Dive.
🧍♂ There’s a large, growing number of single people in the world: over 2 billion of them, in fact. An increasing number of them live alone: single-person households were the fastest-growing household type globally from 2010 to 2019, with nearly half the growth coming from Asia.
💸 Single people traditionally paid a premium, but now the economy is shifting to accommodate them.
✈️🥢🏠 As a result, there’s been a rise in solo travel, solo dining and smaller homes, radically reshaping those industries.
QUOTABLE
“I love being single. It’s almost like being rich.”
— Sue Grafton, author
BY THE NUMBERS
6.8 million Only 6.8 million couples got married in China in 2022, the lowest number since 1986.
44% According to a survey from 2021, 44 per cent of unmarried urban young women from China do not plan to marry.
35% By 2050, the proportion of single-person households worldwide is expected to reach 35 per cent, up from 28 per cent from 2018.
US$156.4 billion Singles’ Day online shopping sales in China in 2023 were estimated to be US$156.4 billion.
QUIZ
By what percentage will the number of single-person households worldwide rise from 2020 to 2030, according to market research company Euromonitor?
A. 28 per cent
B. 78 per cent
C. 128 per cent
Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
DID YOU KNOW?
Singles’ Day was first established by a group of bachelors at Nanjing University as an ironic rejoinder to couple-oriented commercial celebrations such as Valentine’s Day—and then Alibaba came along and turned it into a giant festival of consumption.
THE EDIT
🇯🇵 Land of the rising single. The growth in the number of single people and the destigmatisation of solo activities is driving major changes in Japanese society.
⚖️ The equality dividend. China is also being transformed by solo living, and it’s largely the result of women’s growing agency.
👩 The equality deficit. Solo travel sounds empowering, but it can also still be challenging for women.
THE FULL PICTURE
The Philippines has the highest proportion of single people in Southeast Asia, at 49 per cent.
KEY PLAYER
Mandy Hale
A driving force in the single pride movement, author and speaker Mandy Hale made her name with The Single Woman blog, in which she advocates for women to take a positive view of flying solo. However, she might have thrown a spanner in the works: she recently announced that she had unexpectedly got married.
HONOUREE TO KNOW
Aida Zunaidi
With a name that incorporates the Malay word for “mother”, social enterprise Ibupreneur helps mothers gain control of their economic destinies. Aida Zunaidi and Wong Wei Qi started it to help vulnerable single, underprivileged and retired mothers use their cooking skills to become financially independent.
ONE FINAL THING
Whatever the festival, some people just don’t get the memo. And so, in 2011, on the most auspicious of all Singles’ Days (it’s to do with the extra two 1s in the date), an unprecedented number of people chose to have their weddings.
