Over half a million people live in one-parent families in Ireland

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Here are some figures of interest from Census 2011

1 in 8 people in Ireland live in a one-parent family (Census 2011)

  • 567,311 persons out of a general population of 4,588,252.

1 in 4 (25.8%) families with children in Ireland is a one-parent family (Census 2011)

  • 215,315 lone parent families out of 834,266 families with children.
  • We previously reported 1 in 6 families in Ireland were one-parent families from the 2006 census data; however this was counting couples who had no children. Normative conceptions of family presuppose the presence of children and including couples, whether married or not, in the calculation is potentially misleading. Therefore we have calculated the above 1 in 4 figure using a base of all families with children in Ireland.

Over half a million people live in one-parent families in Ireland (Census 2011)

  • 567,311 persons
  • 29,031 lone fathers as opposed to 186,284 lone mothers.

13.5 per cent of one-parent families are headed by a father (Census 2011)

 1 in 5 (21.7%) children live in a one-parent family (Census 2011)

  • 351,996 children in one-parent families, out of a national total of 1,625,975 children.