The size of the Chinese family has been getting smaller in recent years, with single-person households on the rise. According to an official report on family development, the average number of family members in a house was three in 2012, compared with over five in the 1950s. The report attributes the decline to low birth rates, late marriages and population migration.
A smaller family has become the trend in the past decade. From 2000 to 2010, the number of single-person households doubled. The report attributes this to the growing number of unmarried and old people who live alone. In 2010, the number of such one person households with the member aged between 30 and 80 stood at 43.2 percent. The percentage of one person households with the member over 80 years of age stood at 40 per cent in 2010.