At the beginning of this year, Singapore expanded its preschool subsidies and improved its support for assisted reproduction and fertility treatments. The goal: more Singaporean children. According to the World Bank (via the Wall Street Journal), Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at about 1.14 children per woman as of 2018. This is down from about 3 in 1970, when the government was actually worried about the opposite problem -- too many children.

Of course, this trend is not unique to Singapore. This is generally the way the winds are blowing in the developed world. Young people are spending more time on education, career, and travel. And they're delaying marriage (or not getting married). On top of this, family-sized housing has become fairly expensive in most big cities. The fastest solution is to ramp up immigration, but many countries, including Singapore, have concerns about what this does to the "national identity."

Earlier this week I wrote about the age groups that are most likely to live in an urban neighborhood in the United States. It was people in their 20s and, to a lesser extent, baby boomers. The data I was relying on used population density to measure urbanity.

Interestingly enough, the demand for co-living seems to mirror this. (Feel free to disagree.) From what I’ve been told, the fastest growing co-living segments are young people recently out of school and retirees. Intuitively this makes sense to me.

If we think back to teachings of Clayton Christensen (another recent post), we “hire” products and services because we have “jobs” that need to be done. In the case of a McDonald’s milkshake that job might be a breakfast that’s appropriate for a long and boring commute.

In the case of co-living, and in urban neighborhoods in general, one of those jobs has got to be social connections. (Again, feel free to disagree.) We do also know that single person households are increasing in many cities. Are these phenomenons related? How big could co-living get?

Note: This post was written on my phone on a flight, which is why there are no links or images.

At the beginning of this year, Singapore expanded its preschool subsidies and improved its support for assisted reproduction and fertility treatments. The goal: more Singaporean children. According to the World Bank (via the Wall Street Journal), Singapore has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world at about 1.14 children per woman as of 2018. This is down from about 3 in 1970, when the government was actually worried about the opposite problem -- too many children.

Of course, this trend is not unique to Singapore. This is generally the way the winds are blowing in the developed world. Young people are spending more time on education, career, and travel. And they're delaying marriage (or not getting married). On top of this, family-sized housing has become fairly expensive in most big cities. The fastest solution is to ramp up immigration, but many countries, including Singapore, have concerns about what this does to the "national identity."

Earlier this week I wrote about the age groups that are most likely to live in an urban neighborhood in the United States. It was people in their 20s and, to a lesser extent, baby boomers. The data I was relying on used population density to measure urbanity.

Interestingly enough, the demand for co-living seems to mirror this. (Feel free to disagree.) From what I’ve been told, the fastest growing co-living segments are young people recently out of school and retirees. Intuitively this makes sense to me.

If we think back to teachings of Clayton Christensen (another recent post), we “hire” products and services because we have “jobs” that need to be done. In the case of a McDonald’s milkshake that job might be a breakfast that’s appropriate for a long and boring commute.

In the case of co-living, and in urban neighborhoods in general, one of those jobs has got to be social connections. (Again, feel free to disagree.) We do also know that single person households are increasing in many cities. Are these phenomenons related? How big could co-living get?

Note: This post was written on my phone on a flight, which is why there are no links or images.