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Who is the most unfortunate when it comes to finding love? The team at ManySpins.com sought to find out by collating data on divorce rates, the number of single person households, and monthly search volumes for dating-related terms across each European country.
Based on these three factors we created the ‘Love Index’. We gave each country up to 25 points for each factor, before adding them together to give each country a score out of 75 to reveal who really is the best and worst at finding love in Europe.
Which countries are the unluckiest in love?
According to our analysis, residents in Sweden 🇸🇪 are the unluckiest in love, taking a clear five-point lead. Swedes have the fifth highest divorce rate (2.4 per 1,000 people) and over half of households in the country are deemed “single households” (51%), thus leading to an unluckiness score of 65 out of 75.
Following behind in second place is the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, with Brits recording a whopping 8.4 divorces per 1,000 people – the highest of all countries considered in our study – and 2 million searches per month, on average, for ‘ways to get a date’. As a result, our study can reveal that the UK has an unluckiness score of 60 out of 75.
Germany 🇩🇪 and Denmark 🇩🇰 are also cursed in their search for love, with both countries coming in joint third place and scoring 56 out of 75. Our analysis can reveal that 1.1 million Germans Google ‘how to find love’ every month, on average, and Denmark holds the fourth highest divorce rate in Europe (2.6 per 1,000 people).
In fourth place is Finland, with an unluckiness rating of 53 out of 75 overall. With the country having the fifth highest divorce rate (2.4 per 1,000 people) and 41% of properties being home to one person, it doesn’t bode well for young Finns looking for a romantic companion.
Lithuania 🇱🇹 takes fifth spot in our study, racking up an unluckiness score of 52 out of 75. It’s unsurprising that the country ranks so high on our Love Index, as almost half (43%) of properties in this European country are home to single person households and they have 3 divorces per 1,000 people – these figures are the third highest among all countries studied.
Rounding off the top 10 unluckiest countries are:
6. Netherlands 🇳🇱 – 49 out of 75
7. Spain 🇪🇸 – 47 out of 75
8. Belgium 🇧🇪 – 46 out of 75
9. Estonia 🇪🇪 – 45 out of 75
10. Austria 🇦🇹, Italy 🇮🇹, Latvia 🇱🇻 – 42 out of 75
Which countries are the luckiest in love?
We can reveal that Slovakians 🇸🇰 are in with the best chance of finding a lover, scoring just 12 out of 75 in our Love Index. With a divorce rate of just 1.8 per 1,000 people, just 22% of all households being “single person”, and 21,000 searches for dating-related terms per month, it suggests that singletons and married couples in this country must be doing something right!
The second luckiest country in their quest for love is Croatia 🇭🇷, scoring just 14 out of 75 in our Love Index. In this country, just under a quarter (23%) of properties are home to a single person household, and just 1.5 people (per 1,000) end up getting divorced.
Your chances of getting (and staying!) hitched in Slovenia 🇸🇮 are also impressive. It boasts the second lowest divorce rate of 1.2 and only 31,500 people are Googling ‘how to get a date’ every month, resulting in a score of 20 out of 75 and placing it as the third luckiest European country when it comes to love.
Irish 🇮🇪 residents also have successful love lives, according to our Love Index, and place as the fourth luckiest country when it comes to love, scoring just 22 out of 75. Our research found that only a quarter of properties in Ireland (25%) are home to singletons, and whilst the country only introduced it into law in 2011, they hold the lowest divorce rate of all European countries – 0.7 per 1,000 people.
The fifth luckiest European country when it comes to love is Romania 🇷🇴, with our Love Index giving the country a score of 24 out of 75. Romanians have one of the lowest divorce rates in Europe as data shows that there are only 1.6 divorces per 1,000 people, and 28% of all homes are single person households, which means that Romanians are definitely doing something right when it comes to finding a life-long partner.
Rounding off the top 10 luckiest countries are:
6. Greece 🇬🇷, Luxembourg 🇱🇺 – 30 out of 75
7. Bulgaria 🇧🇬 – 31 out of 75
8. Poland 🇵🇱, Portugal 🇵🇹 – 32 out of 75
9. Czech Republic 🇨🇿 – 34 out of 75
10. Hungary 🇭🇺 – 39 out of 75
Top 10 European countries with the highest divorce rates:
(per 1,000 people)
1. United Kingdom – 8.4
2. Latvia – 3.1
3. Lithuania – 3.0
4. Denmark – 2.6
5. Estonia – 2.5
6. Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden – 2.4
7. Portugal, Spain – 2.1
8. Belgium, Luxembourg – 2.0
9. Germany, Hungary, Netherlands – 1.9
10. Austria, Greece, Slovakia – 1.8
Top 10 European countries with the most single person households:
1. Sweden – 51%
2. Denmark – 45%
3. Lithuania – 43%
4. Finland, Germany – 41%
5. Estonia – 40%
6. Bulgaria, Netherlands – 38%
7. Austria – 37%
8. Latvia, Luxembourg – 36%
9. Italy, Slovenia – 33%
10. Belgium, Hungary – 32%
Top 10 European countries with the highest number of dating-related searches on Google:
(on average per month)
1. United Kingdom – 2,103,650
2. Spain – 1,410,710
3. Italy – 1,291,620
4. Germany – 1,142,590
5. Poland – 503,480
6. Sweden – 290,190
7. Belgium – 289,240
8. Netherlands – 225,810
9. Hungary – 193,740
10. Ireland – 171,960
Methodology:
- Divorce rates for each European country in 2017 were obtained via Eurostat. This excludes the UK as no data was available here, so UK data was obtained via Gov.uk (Divorces in England and Wales). In this instance, the ‘UK’ includes England and Wales only.
- Percentages of single person households for each European country in 2017 were obtained again via Eurostat.
- The most up-to-date data for both of the above criteria was found to be 2017, which is why these years were used.
- Collective online monthly search volumes for each European country were obtained via SEMrush on 19/10/20 and are accurate as of then.
- Once all data was collated: for each factor, all 25 European countries were ranked from highest to lowest and given a score (from 1-25). The scores for each factor were then totalled for each country to create their final ‘unluckiness scores’.