The Chamber of Commerce listed Atlanta as the ninth loneliest city in America in its study measuring household changes within the country.
The study correlates living alone with loneliness, analyzing the percentage of one-person households in Atlanta and comparing findings to the city’s total population.
According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, just under 45% of Atlantans live in one-person households, with this value increasing by about 2.75 percentage points each year since 2016. Around 10% of Atlanta residents living alone are aged 65 or older.
When taking gender into account, a higher percentage of women live alone than men, making Atlanta the eighth loneliest city for men and the ninth loneliest for women.
Atlanta’s percentage of one-person households sits well above the national average of 29%, along with each of the 30 cities included in the chamber’s study. While states like Virginia, Ohio and New York have two or more cities make the Chamber of Commerce’s list, Atlanta is the only city in Georgia to make an appearance.
The Chamber of Commerce attributes the increase in loneliness to younger generations deciding to hold off on pursuing major life events, such as marriage and starting a family. The chamber also asserts that the pandemic played a role in the increase, with cities like Cape Coral, Florida and Irving, Texas seeing upwards of a 30-40% increase in single-person households from 2019 to 2021.
As for Atlanta, year-over-year rental price increases remained tame before the pandemic’s arrival, according to data from Apartment List. However, annual rent change skyrocketed in 2021, with the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta region witnessing a price increase of about 23%, surpassing the national average increase of 17.8%. Rental prices in Atlanta and across the state of Georgia have since cooled slightly, giving the city a competitive edge against those with pricier housing markets.