In a recent airline pricing investigation, American Airlines quoted $496 for a single seat from Miami to Charlotte. Change the search to two passengers, and the price dropped to $155 each.
Two seats for $310. One seat for $496.
Call it a companion discount or a solo surcharge. For the person traveling alone, the result is the same.
It’s a striking example of a much larger disconnect between how people live and how businesses expect them to.
In 2025, 29 percent of U.S. households consisted of one person, up from 20 percent fifty years earlier. Married-couple households, once the clear majority, now account for fewer than half.
Yet in an August 2026 study, Boston Consulting Group found that 50 to 70 percent of surveyed people living alone, depending on the category, felt products and services weren’t designed for people like them.
That’s quite a disconnect for a consumer population that has been growing for decades.
And it extends beyond people who live alone. Someone can have a spouse, partner, roommates, or a family and still choose to dine, travel, shop, and pursue experiences independently.
Yet so much of the world remains priced and designed around the assumption of two or more. Vacation packages based on double occupancy. Discounts that require buying multiples. Services and experiences that become less accessible or more expensive when there’s only one customer.
Some differences reflect genuine economies of scale. Others are harder to justify. But collectively, they reveal how deeply the traditional household remains embedded in the way businesses operate.
This isn’t an argument against couples, families, or the advantages of sharing expenses. Nor is it a request for special treatment.
It’s a recognition that independent living and experiences have become an ordinary part of modern life, whether by choice, circumstance, or simply personal preference.
People have already changed how they live.
It’s the world’s assumptions that haven’t kept pace.
