Fewer than one quarter (23.4%) of the 203.1 million households across the European Union included children in 2025, according to new data from Eurostat.
This equates to a total of 47.4 million households across the bloc.
Most of these households were occupied by couples with children (14.7%), other types of households with children (5.6%) and single adults with children (3.0%).
Among the 76.6% of households without children, single-adult households represented the largest category, accounting for 37.5% of all households across the EU. Couples without children made up 24.1%, while other household types accounted for 15.1%.
Eurostat added that the number of single-adult households without children has increased significantly over the past decade.
Between 2016 and 2025, the number rose by 19.2%, from 63.9 million to 76.1 million households. Over the same period, the number of couples without children increased by 3.3%.
By contrast, the number of couples with children fell by 6.3%, declining from 31.9 million households in 2016 to 29.9 million in 2025. Other household types with children also declined by 3.5%.
Country by country
On a country-by-country basis, the proportion of households with children varied considerably. Slovakia recorded the highest share, with 35.4% of households including children, followed by Ireland (30.8%) and Cyprus (28.2%).
At the other end of the scale, fewer than a fifth of households in Finland (18.2%), Lithuania (18.4%) and Germany (19.9%) included children.
Number of children
As the data also showed, half of all EU households with children had one child in 2025. Around 37.6% had two children, while 12.2% had three or more children.
Single-child households were most common in Portugal (61.8%), Bulgaria (60.4%) and Malta (59.5%).
In 14 of the EU’s 27 member states, most households with children had two or more children. This share was highest in Sweden (57.8%), the Netherlands (57.6%) and Ireland (56.7%). Read more here.
