Aline Beckestein
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Rio - One in every ten Brazilians lived alone last year. This is one of the findings contained in the National Household Sample Survey, 2004 (PNAD-2004), released last Friday (25) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). In the opinion of anthropologist Mirian Goldenberg, the "graying" of the population, especially the greater life expectancy of women in relation to men, may be one of the reasons for this significant statistic. "Women live longer, and, when they become widows, they end up living alone, since their children have, in general, formed new families," she explained.

According to Goldenberg, another important factor at the root of this phenomenon is the "growing individualization of Brazilian society." In her view, this phenomenon began to manifest itself considerably later than in the so-called First World countries. "People want to have their own home, their independence. This is a notion that is gradually gaining favor in the country. The tendency is, as the Brazilian economy continues to develop, for the population to want to live alone more and more, as is already common in the United States and Europe," she remarked.

Translation: David Silberstein