placestats

Electricity use per person vs. One-person households

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 148 countries, Electricity use per person and One-person households rise and fall together at r = +0.56 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.12, which could easily be chance (q = 0.42, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things. Caution: direction is not consistent across regions.

Comparing countries across the middle half of electricity use per person, 454 to 5,225 kWh per person, one-person households is 6.88% of households higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 1.59% of households.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.561p = 1.3e-13 · 148 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.116p = 0.163 · likely range [-0.05, +0.27]
p, allowing for regions0.221standard error 0.085 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.419across 13,797 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Electricity use per person · kWh per personlink with income +0.93 · proxy
One-person households · % of householdslink with income +0.70 · high

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Electricity use per person · kWh per person →One-person households · % of households →18.224,4900.19%41.1%Aruba: 9,253 kWh per person, 21.4% of householdsAfghanistan: 160 kWh per person, 0.19% of householdsAngola: 411 kWh per person, 10.8% of householdsAlbania: 3,106 kWh per person, 9.95% of householdsArgentina: 3,543 kWh per person, 22.8% of householdsArmenia: 2,757 kWh per person, 15.2% of householdsAustralia: 10,615 kWh per person, 22.8% of householdsAustria: 8,322 kWh per person, 36.3% of householdsBurundi: 40.6 kWh per person, 6.04% of householdsBelgium: 7,361 kWh per person, 34% of householdsBenin: 160 kWh per person, 9.78% of householdsBurkina Faso: 135 kWh per person, 6.64% of householdsBangladesh: 672 kWh per person, 2.85% of householdsBulgaria: 5,440 kWh per person, 30.8% of householdsBahamas, The: 5,607 kWh per person, 17.7% of householdsBosnia and Herzegovina: 4,599 kWh per person, 11.5% of householdsBelarus: 5,054 kWh per person, 38% of householdsBelize: 2,038 kWh per person, 17.2% of householdsBermuda: 9,434 kWh per person, 34.1% of householdsBolivia: 1,083 kWh per person, 20.5% of householdsBrazil: 3,581 kWh per person, 12% of householdsBarbados: 3,930 kWh per person, 26.3% of householdsBrunei Darussalam: 12,016 kWh per person, 7.22% of householdsBhutan: 15,742 kWh per person, 6.13% of householdsCentral African Republic: 27.2 kWh per person, 6.2% of householdsCanada: 16,090 kWh per person, 28.2% of householdsChile: 4,456 kWh per person, 20.2% of householdsCote d'Ivoire: 315 kWh per person, 17% of householdsCameroon: 251 kWh per person, 15.3% of householdsCongo, Dem. Rep.: 159 kWh per person, 7.55% of householdsCongo, Rep.: 850 kWh per person, 13.8% of householdsColombia: 1,715 kWh per person, 11.1% of householdsComoros: 165 kWh per person, 4.91% of householdsCosta Rica: 2,416 kWh per person, 12.1% of householdsCyprus: 4,311 kWh per person, 20.8% of householdsCzechia: 6,413 kWh per person, 32.5% of householdsGermany: 6,188 kWh per person, 37.3% of householdsDominican Republic: 1,969 kWh per person, 20.1% of householdsAlgeria: 2,005 kWh per person, 1.61% of householdsEgypt, Arab Rep.: 2,064 kWh per person, 6.48% of householdsSpain: 5,744 kWh per person, 23.2% of householdsEthiopia: 229 kWh per person, 6.36% of householdsFinland: 15,610 kWh per person, 41% of householdsFiji: 1,238 kWh per person, 5.94% of householdsFrance: 7,152 kWh per person, 35.5% of householdsGabon: 1,252 kWh per person, 22.4% of householdsUnited Kingdom: 4,621 kWh per person, 30.6% of householdsGeorgia: 3,862 kWh per person, 15% of householdsGhana: 634 kWh per person, 21.5% of householdsGuinea: 273 kWh per person, 5.07% of householdsGambia, The: 185 kWh per person, 9.72% of householdsGuinea-Bissau: 36.3 kWh per person, 4.14% of householdsGreece: 5,590 kWh per person, 25.7% of householdsGuatemala: 888 kWh per person, 4.33% of householdsGuyana: 1,660 kWh per person, 15.8% of householdsHong Kong SAR, China: 6,583 kWh per person, 18.3% of householdsHonduras: 1,167 kWh per person, 10.4% of householdsCroatia: 5,210 kWh per person, 24.6% of householdsHaiti: 73.1 kWh per person, 9.43% of householdsHungary: 5,077 kWh per person, 32.1% of householdsIndonesia: 1,314 kWh per person, 7.1% of householdsIndia: 1,423 kWh per person, 5.11% of householdsIreland: 7,091 kWh per person, 22% of householdsIran, Islamic Rep.: 4,281 kWh per person, 7.16% of householdsIraq: 3,406 kWh per person, 1.01% of householdsItaly: 5,268 kWh per person, 31.1% of householdsJamaica: 1,733 kWh per person, 28.2% of householdsJordan: 2,054 kWh per person, 4.36% of householdsJapan: 8,366 kWh per person, 34.5% of householdsKazakhstan: 6,050 kWh per person, 15.5% of householdsKenya: 271 kWh per person, 19.4% of householdsKyrgyz Republic: 2,647 kWh per person, 12.3% of householdsCambodia: 1,254 kWh per person, 3.37% of householdsKiribati: 297 kWh per person, 3.71% of householdsKorea, Rep.: 12,090 kWh per person, 31.8% of householdsLao PDR: 2,009 kWh per person, 3.18% of householdsLiberia: 102 kWh per person, 12% of householdsSt. Lucia: 2,225 kWh per person, 26.8% of householdsLesotho: 248 kWh per person, 18% of householdsLithuania: 4,353 kWh per person, 31.7% of householdsLuxembourg: 9,846 kWh per person, 33.3% of householdsLatvia: 4,057 kWh per person, 41.1% of householdsMacao SAR, China: 8,719 kWh per person, 15.1% of householdsMorocco: 1,255 kWh per person, 7.2% of householdsMoldova: 2,059 kWh per person, 22.6% of householdsMadagascar: 76 kWh per person, 7.11% of householdsMaldives: 1,610 kWh per person, 4.49% of householdsMexico: 2,703 kWh per person, 10.1% of householdsNorth Macedonia: 4,604 kWh per person, 11.8% of householdsMali: 223 kWh per person, 3.11% of householdsMalta: 5,922 kWh per person, 22.6% of householdsMyanmar: 402 kWh per person, 5.35% of householdsMontenegro: 6,859 kWh per person, 15.4% of householdsMongolia: 3,528 kWh per person, 8.96% of householdsMozambique: 476 kWh per person, 8.41% of householdsMauritania: 458 kWh per person, 3.97% of householdsMalawi: 83.6 kWh per person, 7.2% of householdsNamibia: 1,333 kWh per person, 17.4% of householdsNiger: 79.5 kWh per person, 3.19% of householdsNigeria: 165 kWh per person, 14.7% of householdsNorway: 24,490 kWh per person, 39.6% of householdsNepal: 372 kWh per person, 4.51% of householdsNew Zealand: 8,252 kWh per person, 21.9% of householdsPakistan: 766 kWh per person, 1.08% of householdsPanama: 2,943 kWh per person, 13.4% of householdsPeru: 1,749 kWh per person, 16.8% of householdsPhilippines: 1,054 kWh per person, 9.18% of householdsPoland: 4,570 kWh per person, 24% of householdsPuerto Rico (US): 6,265 kWh per person, 23.1% of householdsPortugal: 5,805 kWh per person, 21.4% of householdsParaguay: 4,228 kWh per person, 10.4% of householdsWest Bank and Gaza: 1,454 kWh per person, 4.31% of householdsQatar: 18,030 kWh per person, 6.98% of householdsRomania: 2,876 kWh per person, 26% of householdsRussian Federation: 8,168 kWh per person, 25.7% of householdsRwanda: 85.6 kWh per person, 7.69% of householdsSudan: 309 kWh per person, 1.59% of householdsSenegal: 439 kWh per person, 6.92% of householdsSingapore: 10,295 kWh per person, 16.1% of householdsSierra Leone: 24.3 kWh per person, 6.42% of householdsEl Salvador: 985 kWh per person, 8.46% of householdsSomalia, Fed. Rep.: 22.6 kWh per person, 1.53% of householdsSerbia: 5,591 kWh per person, 21.8% of householdsSao Tome and Principe: 390 kWh per person, 13.8% of householdsSuriname: 2,743 kWh per person, 14% of householdsSlovak Republic: 4,886 kWh per person, 25.3% of householdsSlovenia: 6,759 kWh per person, 32.6% of householdsEswatini: 1,328 kWh per person, 21.7% of householdsTurks and Caicos Islands: 5,799 kWh per person, 33.6% of householdsChad: 18.2 kWh per person, 5.43% of householdsTogo: 263 kWh per person, 15.7% of householdsThailand: 3,143 kWh per person, 21.6% of householdsTajikistan: 1,805 kWh per person, 2.88% of householdsTurkmenistan: 3,204 kWh per person, 3.74% of householdsTimor-Leste: 364 kWh per person, 6.41% of householdsTonga: 672 kWh per person, 6.94% of householdsTunisia: 2,016 kWh per person, 6.27% of householdsTanzania: 132 kWh per person, 9.63% of householdsUganda: 107 kWh per person, 13.2% of householdsUkraine: 2,719 kWh per person, 25% of householdsUruguay: 4,358 kWh per person, 17.6% of householdsUnited States: 13,061 kWh per person, 27.9% of householdsViet Nam: 3,087 kWh per person, 10.5% of householdsSamoa: 734 kWh per person, 4.4% of householdsKosovo: 4,420 kWh per person, 3.32% of householdsSouth Africa: 3,658 kWh per person, 23.8% of householdsZambia: 779 kWh per person, 7.97% of householdsZimbabwe: 727 kWh per person, 12.9% of householdsAFGBLRBRNBTNCANFINJAMLVANORQATSDNSOM

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.5611.3e-13148
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.6354.1e-18148
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.1160.163148
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.0520.529148

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 148 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.445 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.053 (without NOR) to +0.192 (without QAT). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: QAT (+0.076).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • direction is not consistent across regions

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific21+0.33
Europe & Central Asia40+0.19
Latin America & Caribbean26+0.31
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan12-0.45
Sub-Saharan Africa41+0.29

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third50-0.20
Middle third49-0.15
Richest third49+0.18

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians92+0.33
Muslims37-0.17

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
France22-0.44
Never a European colony15+0.58
Spain16+0.17
United Kingdom43-0.09

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.150 after dropping 6 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 32years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.154, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose electricity use per person moved did not tend to see their one-person households move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.116for comparison
Within countries+0.353each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.154q = 0.144 · 41 countries
Year-on-year changes—q = —
Read with care.
  • Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

257 country-years (one country in one year), 41 countries, 1990–2021, about 6 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 1% for Electricity use per person, 10% for One-person households. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.30−0.3-100+1years One-person households trails Electricity use per person →lag -10: r = 0.192 (n = 284)lag -9: r = 0.174 (n = 304)lag -8: r = 0.143 (n = 309)lag -7: r = 0.133 (n = 316)lag -6: r = 0.158 (n = 334)lag -5: r = 0.199 (n = 335)lag -4: r = 0.215 (n = 331)lag -3: r = 0.164 (n = 317)lag -2: r = 0.204 (n = 299)lag -1: r = 0.153 (n = 284)lag +0: r = 0.154 (n = 257)lag +1: r = 0.143 (n = 214)

Same year (lag 0): +0.154. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.21 at lag -4) is higher than the same-year one by 0.06. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 12 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


kWh per person
% of households		Years
Norway NOR24,49039.6%2025, 2011
Qatar QAT18,0306.98%2025, 2012
Canada CAN16,09028.2%2025, 2016
Bhutan BTN15,7426.13%2024, 2010
Finland FIN15,61041%2025, 2010
United States USA13,06127.9%2025, 2015
Korea, Rep. KOR12,09031.8%2025, 2020
Brunei Darussalam BRN12,0167.22%2024, 2011
Australia AUS10,61522.8%2025, 2016
Singapore SGP10,29516.1%2025, 2020
Luxembourg LUX9,84633.3%2025, 2011
Bermuda BMU9,43434.1%2024, 2016
Aruba ABW9,25321.4%2024, 2010
Macao SAR, China MAC8,71915.1%2024, 2016
Japan JPN8,36634.5%2025, 2015

Ember, Yearly Electricity Data; population from Our World in Data, with processing by Our World in Data
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). Database on Household Size and Composition 2022.

Sources

Electricity use per person

Electricity demand per person (kWh)

Ember · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

All the electricity a country uses in a year, divided by its population, in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kWh runs a 100-watt bulb for ten hours. It counts the power made at home plus imports, minus exports, including the power lost in wires along the way. So it is a little higher than "consumption" figures that leave those losses out. Use per person ranges from under 100 kWh a year in parts of Africa to over 50,000 in Iceland, where aluminium smelters use most of it, so a few industries can set a small country's figure. It rises steeply with income, and is measured in percentage terms (on a log scale) where it is used for adjusting. No "better" direction is set: more electricity can mean more comfort and industry, or more waste.

One-person households

Share of one-person households

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated irregular (2017, 2019 and 2022 editions)

Households of one person, from the same UN collection as the single-parent share and with the same limits: one to three readings per country, from sources that sort households differently, and few after 2019. It rises with age and with income, and falls with family size. That is three different things in one number. No "better" direction is set.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 13,797 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Electricity use per person and One-person households

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Electricity use per person changes One-person households, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Electricity use per person or One-person households