56% of Gen Z want a relationship and lack one, and a UK think tank points to closed pubs

Only 18 per cent of Generation Z adults say they are not interested in a relationship, according to Opinium polling for the Intergenerational Foundation (IF), a UK research group. In its report "The Cost of Loving Crisis", the group argues that money, closed pubs and housing, not lost interest, keep young adults single. IF explained the findings in a new article on October 14, 2026, after publishing the full report earlier.

A deficit of 56 per cent

IF has begun tracking a measure it calls the dating deficit: the share of people who want a relationship but are not in one. For Gen Z the figure stands at 56 per cent. Among Millennials it is 23 per cent, for Generation X 21 per cent, and for Baby Boomers 12 per cent.

The trend is older than the polling. According to the report, 46 per cent of 25 to 29-year-olds were single in 2023, up from 29 per cent in 2011, and the number of cohabiting and married young people has kept falling. IF's author Sam Corbett writes that the press adopted the term "relationship recession" almost two years ago, but that the slide began much earlier.

The group's summary does not state the size of the Opinium sample, and the report's authors are a think tank that campaigns on fairness between generations, which is the frame they bring to dating.

The price of a first date

Opinium found that 57 per cent of Gen Z believe financial pressures are a major barrier to dating, and 49 per cent say they would go on more dates if money were not a factor. IF adds a separate 2024 study in which 64 per cent of single people spent between £90 and £140 on an average date. Corbett sets this against the Beatles: "Can't Buy Me Love" dates from 1964, he notes, when a round of drinks for two cost about four shillings and sixpence, and the sentiment is easy to agree with, yet love is now more of a luxury for the young.

The meeting comes before the bill.

The same money story is told in the United States, with different numbers. A BMO survey, the 2026 Real Financial Progress Index, found that half of single Americans were going on fewer dates or choosing cheaper activities, and that a single date cost Gen Z adults an average of $205.

Where people used to meet

Before the bill comes the meeting. In IF's new polling, only 3 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds said they met their current or most recent partner in passing, in places such as pubs, bars and concerts. Almost two pubs closed every day in Britain during the first three months of 2026, according to the same IF article, and those that survive increasingly price out younger patrons.

More than half of Gen Z adults told pollsters that a lack of opportunities to meet new people has made dating harder. Dating apps, which were meant to fill that gap, are described in IF's summary as tending to reward continued engagement over the formation of lasting relationships.

A second change is at home. Less than 20 years ago, 56 per cent of 25 to 29-year-olds lived with a partner and 17 per cent lived with a parent. By 2023 those positions had nearly reversed, at 29 per cent and 43 per cent. The age at which a person is more likely to live with a partner than with a parent rose from 24 in 2009 to 28 in 2023, and the effect is sharpest in London, where living costs are highest.

That postponement matters for a plain reason. The stage where two people share a kitchen and a routine, and a bond is built from small repeated acts, arrives later, or not at all.

The American count, and its critics

The US version of the story came in February 2026. The State of Our Unions report, by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies, drew on a 2025 national survey of dating experiences covering 5,275 unmarried adults aged 22 to 35. Only 31 per cent were active daters, meaning they dated once a month or more: 26 per cent of women and 36 per cent of men.

The report's authors, led by Alan Hawkins, found that 52 per cent named too little money as the biggest obstacle, 49 per cent named a lack of confidence, and 48 per cent named bad past experiences. Only 28 per cent said they could stay positive after a bad date or a breakup. Brian Willoughby, one of the authors, said most young adults hold fairly traditional goals for dating and show no overt fear of commitment, but many lack the skills and the resilience for the ups and downs of beginning a relationship.

The two countries do not measure the same thing. IF counts wanting a relationship against having one, while the American report counts how often single people date, so the 56 per cent and the 31 per cent cannot be set side by side.

Halina Bennet, writing in Slow Boring on March 13, 2026, does not accept the American framing. A "dating recession" implies that far more people dated in the past, she argues, yet the study has no baseline from earlier generations or earlier years. She also notes that the definition of actively dating is unclear, since someone swiping and messaging on an app may count as dating to some and not to others. Her own view is that the systems that once moved people toward each other have thinned out.

Introductions that came with a reference

Slow Boring makes a point that IF's report only brushes against. The older routes to a partner, such as relatives, friends, church and work, came with accountability attached: the person making the introduction had a reputation to protect, and so did the person being introduced. Bennet calls this vouching, and writes that the apps stripped it out.

She leans on the Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, whose survey of how heterosexual couples meet shows online dating overtaking introductions through friends around 2013. By 2017 roughly 39 per cent of such couples had met online, up from 22 per cent eight years earlier. Rosenfeld also found that how a couple met has no meaningful effect on the quality or length of the relationship once they are together, and that meeting online has not raised the rate at which people pair off.

Bennet adds that the Pew Research Center recorded a record share of 40-year-olds who had never been married in 2021, and that small start-ups such as Cerca, with around 60,000 users against Tinder's hundreds of millions, now try to rebuild the friend-of-a-friend model. Those figures come from her column, not from IF, and they are offered as commentary rather than as a survey.

A date that starts with a friend suggesting two people meet costs little. It also carries a first piece of trust before anyone has spoken.

No change in drink prices would restore that part of the old system on its own.

What a first date trains

Behind the numbers sits a question about skill. Tessa West, a professor of psychology at New York University who studies communication between employees and bosses, told Fortune in an article of March 15, 2026 that skills learned in relationships carry into work. In her words: "Those skills, like the ability for people to actually do those well in their relationship, directly predicts how good you are at them at work."

Fortune does not give the sample or the design behind her research, and her claim is about workplace readiness, not about whether people find partners. It still gives a reason to ask how much practice young adults get in the slow, awkward part of a relationship.

IF itself points to such studies, noting that young people with no experience of romantic relationships may be less prepared for the workplace. The Fortune article, which came out months before IF's article, makes the same point from the American side.

An earlier Reflets brief on a survey of men in Shanghai found a related pattern, with doubt about the future, not past romances, explaining attachment gaps.

What IF asks of government

IF says plainly that it does not want the government legislating love lives. It asks for two things: protect the spaces young people use to meet and socialise, and reduce housing costs so that young couples can begin their lives together sooner.

The group's own count is modest on one point. Corbett writes that there remains a healthy appetite for relationships among young people, and that more than half of Gen Z adults want one and do not have one.

Sources

• The Cost of Loving Crisis: Why young people are dating less, Intergenerational Foundation
• Gen Z's "cost of loving" crisis explained, Intergenerational Foundation, Sam Corbett, October 14, 2026
• Intergenerational Foundation home page, blog listing dated October 14, 2026