Washington, DC, is loneliest city in US, study says. Which other cities made the list?

Harry Truman has been quoted as saying, “You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.” New research seems to support the sentiment behind the phrase.

A study published by the Chamber of Commerce found Washington, D.C., is the loneliest city in the U.S.

To reach its conclusion, the chamber examined Census Bureau data from over 170 cities with at least 150,000 people, according to researchers.

Loneliness was measured using the percentage of city households occupied by only one person, researchers said.

Of the 319,565 households in Washington, almost half, 48%, are one-person households, researchers said. Additionally, the number of Washingtonians living alone has increased by almost 6% every year since 2016.

Following the nation’s capital, St. Louis, Missouri; Alexandria, Virginia; Richmond, Virginia; and Cincinnati, Ohio, all placed in the top five loneliest cities.

When broken up by gender, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is the loneliest city for males, and Richmond, Virginia, is the loneliest city for females, researchers wrote.

Meanwhile, California dominates the list of least lonely cities with nine of the top 10 cities being located in the Golden State, according to researchers. Fontana, Oxnard, Moreno Valley and Elk Grove appear at the top of the list.

There has been an extraordinary rise in the number of people living alone across the globe in recent decades, according to Our World in Data, which also found that people are more likely to live alone in affluent countries.

However, living alone does not necessarily bring about loneliness, according to the organization.

Attempts to study the connection between the two have produced mixed results.

One study found living alone is associated with emotional loneliness, but it is not related to social isolation.

Other studies have found that, despite the narrative of the “loneliness epidemic,” which has been widely reported on, self-reported loneliness has not increased over time. One study even found a very small decline in youth loneliness.

This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 5:06 PM with the headline "Washington, DC, is loneliest city in US, study says. Which other cities made the list?."