AFTER the Dinkies, meet the Sinmoos. If "Dual Income No Kids" households were the phenomenon of the 1980s, then the 1990s have been marked by the rise of the "Single Income Never Married Owner-Occupier".
Sinmoo man is likely to be a graduate in his 30s with a well-paid job, a new(ish) car and modest mortgage. Most nights he dines out and spends weekends visiting friends, relatives or playing golf.
He has a three-bedroom house that he rarely visits and a cleaner to do the washing and ironing. He has all the trappings of a comfortable middle-class lifestyle except one: a wife and family. He - it is more likely to be he - lives alone, one of a million single, never married owner-occupiers in England.
Figures released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics charts the development of Sinmoo man and woman over two decades of profound social change.
In 1977, there were 370,000 single, never married owner occupiers; today, there are three times as many and they make up nearly one in 12 of all households. The number of under-45 Sinmoos has risen six-fold in 20 years, from 100,000 to 660,000.
By no means all are in the income bracket of our illustrative Sinmoo; but around 40 per cent earn more than £20,000 a year. Even those on modest incomes have found the cost of renting prohibitive and are content to live in a two-bedroom terrace or even a bedsit, especially in London.
But, according to research by Alan Holmans, former Department of Environment chief housing economist, they are more likely to own a house than a flat.
About 70 per cent of single men and 60 per cent of women aged under 45 lived in a house, most had a mortgage and many received gifts and loans from family and friends to help them buy.
More than 13 per cent of single men and 18 per cent of single women received money towards the purchase compared with seven per cent of couples. For Sinmoos aged under 30, 20 per cent of men and 30 per cent of women were helped to buy their home.
Whoever they are, the Sinmoos are indicative of the lifestyle revolution. In Britain the proportion of younger single people who own their home is significantly higher than elsewhere in Europe. In France only 14 per cent of those living alone are owner-occupiers compared with 54 per cent in England.
Paradoxically, the age at which people leave home has been rising. Among men born between 1940 and 1954, 73 per cent had left by 25. Among those born between 1965 and 1969, only 61 per cent had flown the nest.
What is new, however, is the number of young men and woman of working age who then choose to buy a home rather than rent or share a flat until they marry - or never marry at all.
The growth of one-person households is one of the principal reason why an extra 4.4 million homes need to be built between now and 2020.
Of these new households, almost 80 per cent - 3.5 million - are expected to come from one-person households. More than half consist of single people who have never married, with single men accounting for 1.4 million of the increase.
The primary cause is the long-term effect of low marriage rates on the number of single people, mainly men, in their 30s and 40s. Between 1991 and 2016, the number of one person households formed by unmarried men and women aged between 30 to 64 is projected to more than double.
An analysis by the Government's Social Survey Division suggests that the increase among men in their 30s has been particularly pronounced. Whereas these men had the lowest proportion of all groups of men living alone in the 1970s, they now represent the largest.
There have also been increases in the proportion of women living alone - but the growth rate has been much lower.
The figures show a growing tendency for single people to live alone rather than share. Between 1971 and 1991, there were increases of some 620,000 single men living alone and 150,000 single women, with the growth pronounced among the under-45s.
About 60 per cent of unmarried men live on their own today compared to 40 per cent in the 1970s. For women, the figure is around 10 per cent.
At younger ages, the highest proportion of Sinmoos is more common among those who have been to university or college.
