How Many Households? A Comparison of Scenarios in the European Union: from Europop2004 to Europop2008

In this article we propose household scenarios in a selection of EU countries until 2031. Since household projections are derived from those of the population we have compared the results achieved applying the recent EUROSTAT projection: EUROPOP2004 (Baseline Scenario) and EUROPOP2008. To these we have applied two hypothesis about the trend of the average household size:the first, the observed decreasing trend, will continue in the future; the second, the average size, has been fixed at the values of the 2001 Census. The results seem to be closer to reality when they are derived from combining the population of the Convergence Scenarios with the hypothesis of decline in household size. Nevertheless, these highlight and exalt some problematic aspects of the evolution of single people in the context of an ageing continent.