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Share of children living with a single parent

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Marriages & Divorces
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What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer?

The child lives primarily in a household with only one adult who is reported as a 'parent' of the child. This can be a biological parent or a step- or adoptive-parent. The household may or may not contain other adults – including grandparents and other adult relatives or unrelated adults – but only one adult can be considered as a parent for the household to be classified as a single-parent household.

Share of children living with a single parent
The percentage of children aged 0-17 living with a single parent.
Source
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 7, 2025
Next expected update
October 2026
Date range
2001–2023
Unit
%

What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer?

The child lives primarily in a household with only one adult who is reported as a 'parent' of the child. This can be a biological parent or a step- or adoptive-parent. The household may or may not contain other adults – including grandparents and other adult relatives or unrelated adults – but only one adult can be considered as a parent for the household to be classified as a single-parent household.

Share of children living with a single parent
The percentage of children aged 0-17 living with a single parent.
Source
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 7, 2025
Next expected update
October 2026
Date range
2001–2023
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

OECD – OECD Family Database - Children in Families

Data on share of children living with a single parent from the OECD Family Database. Note that the Excel files are badly formatted. The OECD Family Database provides cross-national indicators on family outcomes and family policies across the OECD countries, its enhanced engagement partners and EU member states.

Retrieved on
October 7, 2025
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?tenant=archive&df[ds]=DisseminateArchiveDMZ&df[id]=DF_FAMILY&df[ag]=OECD
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2025). OECD Family Database.

Data on share of children living with a single parent from the OECD Family Database. Note that the Excel files are badly formatted. The OECD Family Database provides cross-national indicators on family outcomes and family policies across the OECD countries, its enhanced engagement partners and EU member states.

Retrieved on
October 7, 2025
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?tenant=archive&df[ds]=DisseminateArchiveDMZ&df[id]=DF_FAMILY&df[ag]=OECD
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2025). OECD Family Database.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of children living with a single parent”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Veronika Samborska, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2020) - “Marriages and Divorces”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://auto-epoch.owid.pages.dev:8789/20251008-084854/grapher/share-of-children-living-with-a-single-parent.html [online resource] (archived on October 8, 2025).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of children living with a single parent” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Family Database - Children in Families” [original data]. Retrieved November 1, 2025 from https://auto-epoch.owid.pages.dev:8789/20251008-084854/grapher/share-of-children-living-with-a-single-parent.html (archived on October 8, 2025).