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Glasgow City Region

This page shows both household trends for local authorities in the Glasgow City Region, and further down the page projected households by type.

Household trends for Glasgow City Region local authorities

Chart showing estimates of number of households in GCR between 2001 and 2023

The number of households has increased in every local authority in the Glasgow City Region in the last two decades. Glasgow has been removed from this chart to better show the detail of the other local authorities. Renfrewshire has remained the second largest local authority in terms of households, and had had the largest proportionate increase in households over this period of 12,191 (16.2%). The smallest increase was in Inverclyde, which had 867 more households in 2023 than in 2001, an increase of 2.4%.

Households by type across Glasgow City RegionHHs GCR 2018Glasgow has the highest proportion of single-adult households (44%) in the city region. In contrast, East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire have considerably lower proportions of single-adult and single-parent households and more households with two or more adults.

Average household size

Chart showing average size of households in GCR in 2001, 2011 and 2022

Household sizes dropped in Scotland, in each of the GCR local authorities and in North and South Lanarkshire between 2001 and 2022. For most of the local authorities shown, the drop in average household sizes was steeper between 2001 and 2011 than between 2011 and 2022, and Glasgow and East Renfrewshire both actually saw slight increases in average household sizes between 2011 and 2022. 

Glasgow had the lowest average household size both in 2001, of 2.08 people per household, and in 2022, with 2.03. The largest figures were in East Renfrewshire, which had an average of 2.54 people per households in 2001 and 2.43 in 2022.

In 2001, Scottish households had an average of 2.27 people; by 2022 this had fallen to 2.12. East Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire, and North and South Lanarkshire had higher average household sizes than the Scottish average in 2022.

The NRS report from which this data is taken discusses how households have changed over time. In 2022, around 37% of households in Scotland were single-person households, compared to just 14% of households in 1961. The report notes that this is in part due to Scotland’s aging population and that older people are more likely than they were in the past to live at home, and more likely than other age groups to live alone.

Notes

These projections are forecasts based on a range of assumptions about underlying demographics and therefore should be considered with caution. The projections shown are the NRS principal projections.

For more detailed information go to the NRS household projections publication.

Further reading under ‘Households’