In 2022, more than 20% of Cape Verdean families had only one person.

More than 20% of Cape Verdean households consisted of just one person, and 91.1% had access to electricity, according to the IMC 2022 Household Living Conditions Statistics report shared with Lusa this Thursday.

According to a study by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Cape Verde, 22.5% of households in 2022 “were nuclear married households” consisting of a representative, an eligible spouse and children and/or stepchildren, while single households consisting of one person accounted for 20.2% of the total.

Nuclear single parent households consisting of a representative, eligible spouse, children and/or stepchildren accounted for 16.8% of all households in the country.

According to INE, the 2022 Continuous Multipurpose Survey (IMC) was conducted based on a sample of 9,918 households “randomly and independently selected in each municipality, taking into account national representativeness by place of residence and for 22 counties.” .

“The sample represents a 90% confidence level with a relative accuracy of 10%. The weighted sample gives a total of 399,074 people distributed across 147,984 households across the country,” he adds.

The study estimated that the resident population of Cape Verde was 491,233 in 2022, spread across 147,984 households, with an average of 3.4 people each. In the distribution of the population by sex, 52.6% were women and 47.4% men.

“The population of Cape Verde was still young, with about 28.2% of the total population under the age of 15 and 16.5% between 15 and 24 years old. The elderly population (65 years and older) made up 6.7% of the total population. in 2022,” the study says.

Cape Verdean households “lived for the most part in classic housing”, at 99.4%, and mostly in detached houses (74.4%). 25.0% of households lived in apartments and only 0.6% lived in non-classical family accommodations “such as tents, mobile accommodations improvised in non-inhabited buildings”.

The proportion of households living in dwellings with electricity was estimated at 91.1% in 2022, indicating “some discrepancy between urban and rural areas”. This indicator was more favorable in urban areas – 92.1% versus 87.5% in rural areas and in the absence of an electricity network “7.3% of households used candles as the main source of lighting, and this figure is higher in rural areas, 10. 3% versus 6.4% in cities.”

Already 73.8% of households lived in premises with access to piped water connected to the public distribution network. Tap water was the main source of supply for the population (71.8%), with 8.1% resorting to “neighborhood houses”, 9.8% through automatic cisterns, 6.6% from fountains and 3.6% from other sources, such as pits, wells, channels or springs.

“In terms of sanitation, the 2022 results showed that 86.1% of households had toilets/toilets in the living quarters, with 51.7% of the toilets/toilets connected to septic tanks and 32.9% to the public sewer network,” – also indicates INE. study.

The literacy rate was another indicator analyzed in the study, which concluded that in the past year, 87.4% of people over the age of 15 were able to read and write.