People living alone: alternative for independence or a way of survival?

Abstract

This paper compares, reflects and investigates why a phenomenon so characteristic of industrialized countries, the increasing presence of people living alone (single-person households) due to the fact that these countries have gone through the demographic transition and place a high value on individual independence; occurs in Bolivia, characterized on the contrary by the coexistence of tradition and modernity, of pre-capitalist and capitalist forms of production, which conditions that even people with families (married and cohabiting) are seen by necessity, impelled to migrate alone to other territories of the country, which offer them labor alternatives, most of the time without any social insurance; Likewise, there is a significant presence of seniors living alone and even some children, given that in Bolivia the economically active population is counted from the age of ten.

After this more general analysis, the situation of single-person households in four municipalities in the departments (the primary subdivisions of Bolivia) of Cochabamba, La Paz, Oruro and Potosí is shown in a more specific way, where their proportion is between 38 and 50 per cent.

Also, some questions are raised, the clarification of which requires a more particularized and in-depth qualitative research and statistical analysis.