11 things you didn’t know about how Europeans live
New EU study looks at everything from home ownership to indoor plumbing.
EU number-crunchers have published a statistical snapshot of how Europeans live, providing an inside look at everything from home size and birth rates to education levels and even the availability of indoor plumbing.
Here are 11 of the most unusual and interesting facts about Europeans today.
1. Home Alone
A significant number of Europeans live alone or with just one other person; almost two thirds of households in the EU are made up of just one or two people. The trend is especially extreme in Scandinavia: In Denmark, 47 percent of people live alone, the highest national rate in the EU. In Oslo, 53 percent of homes are single-person households.
2. Indoor toilets — you’re not always privy to one
Indoor plumbing isn’t a given on the Continent. Perhaps the most shocking statistic of all is that in the Baltic countries, Bulgaria and Romania, more than 10 percent of dwellings are “without an indoor flushing toilet.” Only in Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K. are you guaranteed to find one.
3. Our house
Almost 95 percent of Romanian households own their own home. Belgians and British have the oldest houses, with 37 percent of their homes built before 1946. But Copenhagen (68.1 percent) and Paris (59.7 percent) top the list in terms of the number of older buildings in specific cities. Residents of East London and Lisbon are the most likely to move in a given year.
4. Château Luxembourg and Schloss Austria
Rural dwellings in those countries are on average 46 square meters larger than those in cities. Parisians will not be surprised to learn that the French government has failed to provide statistics on the number of dwellings smaller than 50 square meters in its capital city. Meanwhile, in Greece, low-income people on average pay 70 percent of their disposable income on housing costs.
5. One in six dwellings in the EU is unoccupied
After creative MEPs suggested using the European Parliament building in Strasbourg for refugee accommodation because it sits empty most of the year, it is interesting to note that millions of homes sit empty across Europe. The U.K. is a notable exception — it has virtually no empty homes (often less than 2 percent) except in its most remote regions. In contrast in 23 regions more than 50 percent of buildings are mostly vacant. Greek islands such as Mýkonos and Santoríni top the vacancy list, along with the mountainous regions of the Hautes-Alpes (France) and the Valle d’Aosta/Vallée d’Aoste (Italy), which are all holiday-driven communities.
6. Geriatric Germany
Europe’s most populous country, Germany, is also its oldest, with a median age of 45.6 years. Ireland is youngest, with a median of 36.1 years. That’s a massive jump from the original statistics collected in 1994, when Sweden had the oldest population with a median age of 38.4 years.
7. Losing Lithuania
In 11 EU countries the population is falling. Lithuania has lost 13.4 percent of its population since joining the EU in 2004; Latvia has lost 12.1 percent. Poland actually recorded a natural increase in population (more births than deaths), but so many Poles were economic migrants — especially to the U.K. and Ireland — that the country’s overall population fell. Tiny Luxembourg and Cyprus recorded the biggest population gains.
8. Migration or procreation?
According to the report, at least 70 percent of the increase in inhabitants in Slovakia, the Netherlands, France and Ireland “could be attributed to natural population change” (people having babies), whereas at least 70 percent of the population increase in Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, Belgium and Cyprus was due to net migration. The population change was evenly split in the U.K. and Denmark, which have had notably heated immigration debates in recent years.
9. The marriage rate has halved since 1964
Even the most matrimonial of Europeans — the Maltese and Cypriots — record a marriage rate today that is lower than the 1964 average. If you’re getting older, and are single and still looking to marry, your best bet is to head to Sweden, where the men don’t marry until 36 on average, and the women until 33. Latvians and Czechs have the least successful marriages: In Riga 16 percent of the female population is divorced, in Karlovarsky Kraj 11.9 percent of the men are divorced.
10. Moroccan magnet
Moroccans make up the largest foreign-born community in the EU.There are more than two million each of Moroccans and Turks legally resident in the EU. Next is Russia with 1.81 million then Algeria with 1.51 million. More than a million Ukrainians and a million Indians call Europe home. Fun fact: The foreign-born population living in the EU has a higher share of persons with jobs than the native-born.
11. E is for education in Estonia
More than 35 percent of Estonians have completed post-secondary education, making them the most learned population in Europe. But even they have a way to go to catch non-EU member Iceland, where more than 50 percent of people got their degree.