Homelessness can take various forms: some people sleep in the streets, some in public spaces, and others are temporarily housed in emergency shelters.

This makes measuring the extent of homelessness difficult. First, countries define and measure homelessness differently, making numbers challenging to compare. Methods sometimes even differ for the same country over time or across regions.

Second, these statistics can miss people who are only briefly homeless, stay with friends, live in their car, or do not seek formal support.

However, while it is challenging to measure homelessness, it is essential to try. Housing is a basic human need and homelessness matters for many other problems that we focus on at Our World in Data. People who are homeless often face poverty, poorer physical and mental health, and shorter lifespans.

On this page, you can find data and visualizations on the number of people affected by homelessness across different countries and how these numbers have changed over time. When presenting this data, we’ve been careful to clarify where comparisons can and can’t be made directly due to differences in definitions and methods.

How common is homelessness across the world?

How is the share of people affected by homelessness changing?

Men are more likely to be homeless in most countries, but there are exceptions

Different definitions of homelessness make international comparisons difficult

🔗 ourworldindata.org