The private living arrangements of human beings have long been characterised by a variety of different forms. Among them, marriage has always taken a privileged position. There has, however, been a significant change in the distribution of living arrangements with the postponement of marriage and family formation towards a higher age during recent decades as well as with growing acceptance of nonmarital cohabitation. Marriage is still the most common living arrangement of adults in Germany. But there has been a shift towards marriage without children, which correlates with low overall numbers of children and the changed age structure of the population. This is why the proportion of married people in the age group of 70 years is still rising, whereas this living arrange-ment became less important for all other age groups since 1996.

The decline of marriage is accompanied by an increase of nonmarital cohabitation as well as of people living alone. These changes take place at different paces and different levels depending on the respective age group. The increase of cohabitation with shared households applies especially to the age group of 30- to 40 years. It has to be empha-sized that the number of single persons (one-person household) is especially increasing among younger and older people (up to 70 years). These are, however, not necessarily single persons; notably persons under 30 years belong to the group living apart tog-ether. Unfortunately, this living arrangement cannot be measured and proven with the household-related concept of the microcensus, which is the database of these analyses.