The typical Australian family has no kids at home.
Empty nests, solo living and single dads are reshaping what a household looks like — and the money questions that come with each. Here's the picture from the ABS, and the door to your own numbers.
What Australia's families look like
Couples with kids are still the single biggest slice — but couples with no kids at home are closing in fast, and one-parent families now make up one in six.
A nation of households, not just families.
For the first time, more couples are living without children at home than with them — and one in four of us lives alone.
Australia added more than a million households in a decade, but the shape of them shifted faster than the count. Longer lives mean more empty nests. Later parenthood means more couples saving alone through their thirties. And separation, migration and housing costs have pushed solo living from a big-city quirk to a national norm.
The clearest sign is the crossover below. Through the 1990s the share of couples with kids at home slipped below the share with none — empty-nesters and pre-family couples together now outnumber the classic mum-dad-and-kids picture. “Average” Australia has quietly stopped meaning what it used to.
Every shift is a decision
Behind each trend is a question thousands of households ask their calculator every week. Here are the ones that come up most.
Find your household ↓
7 doorsPick the household that looks most like yours. Each door opens onto the numbers, the pressures and the calculators built for it.
