With Cyprien Rousset (Sciences Po, Paris)
DATE
On Wednesday, October 29th, 2025, 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Room: 1106 (385, Sherbrooke East Street, Montreal, QC)
Free but mandatory registration:
Note: The presentation will be in French. Questions may be asked in English.
Description
A 35-minute communication will be followed by a period of discussion. The Quantitative Workshops aims to create a structured and dynamic community of social science researchers in Quebec who work with quantitative methods. Students and professors are invited to participate and to submit presentation proposals.
Bio
Cyprien Rousset is a doctoral candidate at Sciences Po, in the Centre for the Sociology of Organizations (Sciences Po/CNRS). Taking household budgets as a point of entry, his dissertation examines how people who live alone construct their lives.
Abstract
Who lives alone in France? Behind this seemingly simple question lies a complex reality. Recent statistics indicate that nearly 20% of French adults live in a one-person household. At the same time, family research—for example on separated fathers or non-cohabiting couples—suggests that belonging to a one-person household does not necessarily mean living alone all the time.
This presentation seeks to understand who lives alone in France using a morphological approach to domestic isolation, which involves exploring the experience of living alone from different temporal perspectives. The first part examines forms of partial cohabitation over the course of a year and shows that in eight out of ten cases, one-person households remain alone throughout the year. This result underscores the relevance of the household unit as a basis for studying the fact of living alone. The second part analyzes the strong growth of one-person households over recent decades. This increase may reflect two distinct dynamics: greater mobility between family configurations over the life course, leading to more short episodes of living alone; or, conversely, a large number of individuals living alone on a long-term basis. Drawing on a study of life trajectories, the third part of the presentation shows that today, living alone most often represents a durable phase in life courses.
Three major sets of French statistical data (INSEE) are used: the Family and Housing Survey (2011), the Employment Surveys (1972–2022), and the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions panel (2004–2019). The analysis combines descriptive statistics, regressions, and sequence analysis.
