In 2021, 10,5% of Germany’s popualtion lived in overcrowded dwellings. This means that the household had too few rooms compared to the number of inhabitants.
A person is considered as living in an overcrowded household if the household does not have at its disposal a minimum of rooms equal to:
- one room for the entire household,
- one room for each couple in the household,
- one room for each single person aged 18 and more,
- one room by pair of single people of the same sex between 12 and 17 years of age,
- one room for each single person between 12 and 17 years of age and not included in the previous category,
- one room by pair of children under 12 years of age.
Examples of affected dwellings are households where
- three children have to share a bedroom
- a teenage brother and sister have to share a bedroom
- or parents have to use the living room as a bedroom
Single parent households (28%) and persons at risk of poverty (22%) were particularly affected in Germany. Persons with non-German citizenship (28%) were also considerably more likely to live in crowded conditions than German nationals (6%). The urban population (15,5%) was more than three times as likely to be affected as persons living in rural areas (5%).
In most other EU Member States overcrowding is more wide-spread. In Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Croatia more than 30% of the population lived in overcrowded dwellings.