Being a single dad can shorten your life: study

– A stiff drink –

Single-parent households have become more common across the developed world in recent decades.

In the United States, for example, the percentage of children living with single mothers nearly tripled from eight percent in 1960 to 23 percent in 2016, according to the US Census.

The percentage living with single fathers increased from one to four over the same period.

In Europe, Denmark tops the list of single-parent households which make up 30 percent of the total.

Of those, 23 percent are headed by women and seven percent by men, according to the OECD rich country grouping.

The corresponding percentages are 19 and four for France; 14 and five for Sweden, 17 and two for Germany; 16 and three for Canada.

Rates of single-parenthood are even higher in many low-income nations, especially in Africa, according to Joseph Chamie, former director of the UN Population Division.

Close to 40 percent of children in South Africa, for example, have their mother as the sole parent, and four percent have only a dad.

Other countries with a large share of single-parent households include Mozambique (36 percent), Dominican Republic (35 percent), Liberia (31 percent), and Kenya (30 percent), he noted in a 2016 report.

“Of the world’s 2.3 billion children, 14 percent — or 320 million — are living in a single-parent household,” he calculated.

In at least two categories, single fathers hold a slight edge over solo moms.

Researchers at the University of Illinois found that moms on their own make about two-thirds of what their male counterparts earn.

And a study in South Korea, published in PLOS ONE, showed single mothers were three times more likely to become alcohol dependent.