Countries With the Highest Single-parent Households

Every country with a figure for single-parent households, ranked from highest to lowest. The top three are Latvia (22.1%), St. Martin (French part) (21.1%) and Bolivia (16.7%). The middle country of the 156 has 9.13%.

What this measures

Share of single-parent households, in % of households. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. For this measure, no agreed better direction.

Households made up of one parent and that parent's children, of any age, and nobody else. A lone parent living with the grandparents is counted as an extended family instead. So this understates single parenthood most where several generations live together. It is the one worldwide series: about 180 countries, but each with only one to three readings. The readings are gathered from household surveys (DHS and MICS), census records and UN Demographic Yearbook tables, which sort households differently. So a jump within a country is as likely to be a change of source as a change in families. Few readings come after 2019. No "better" direction is set: it describes how people live, not a score.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2010–2021. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on single-parent households

• Countries With the Lowest Single-parent Households
• Single-parent households by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Highest Religious Attendance
• Countries With the Highest Religion Very Important
• Countries With the Highest Frequent Prayer
• Countries With the Highest Confidence in Religious Institutions
• Countries With the Highest Divorce Rates
• Countries With the Highest Births Outside Marriage
• Countries With the Highest Women's Age at First Marriage
• Countries With the Highest Marriage Rates

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.