840,000 Scots live on their own – and set to top 1.25m

About 840,000 Scots stay on their own and now account for more than a third of households in the country, according to the General Register of Scotland.

Women are more likely to live alone than men, and the number of residential singletons is expected to reach 1.25 million by 2033.

Registrar General Duncan Macniven said: "The number of households in Scotland is still increasing. This is due partly to a small increase in population, but mainly to changes in household structure, with more people living alone.

"The rate of growth has slowed in the past two years. The increase from 2008 to 2009 was the lowest in the last five years."

There was a 7 per cent increase in the number of adults living alone between 2003 and 2008. But over the next 25 years, the number of households in Scotland is projected to increase by more than a fifth to 2.8 million, driven by a growing number of small households.

Households headed by someone aged 60 or over will jump from 780,000 to 1.15 million in the same period and households headed by someone aged 85 or over are due to more than double from 73,000 to 196,000.