Millennials increasingly likely to live with parents
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Members of the graduating class and faculty attended the Savannah College of Art and Design commencement in Atlanta in May 2014. For the first time on record, living with parents is now the most common arrangement for Americans ages 18 to 34, an analysis of Census data by the Pew Research Center has found.
WASHINGTON » Many of America’s young adults appear to be in no hurry to move out of their old bedrooms.
For the first time on record, living with parents is now the most common arrangement for people ages 18 to 34, an analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center has found.
Nearly one-third of millennials live with their parents, slightly more than the proportion who live with a spouse or partner. It’s the first time that living at home has outpaced living with a spouse for this age group since such record-keeping began in 1880.
The remaining young adults are living alone, with other relatives, in college dorms, as roommates or under other circumstances.
The sharp shift reflects a long-running decline in marriage, amplified by the economic upheavals of the Great Recession. The trend has been particularly evident among Americans who lack a college degree.
The pattern may be a contributing factor in the sluggish growth of the U.S. economy, which depends heavily on consumer spending. With more young people living with their parents rather than on their own, fewer people need to buy appliances, furniture or cable subscriptions. The recovery from the 2008-09 recession has also been hobbled by historically low levels of home construction and home ownership.
As recently as 2000, nearly 43 percent of young adults ages 18 to 34 were married or living with a partner. By 2014, that proportion was just 31.6 percent.
In 2000, only 23 percent of young adults were living with parents. In 2014, the figure reached 32.1 percent.
The proportion of young adults now living with their parents is similar to the proportions that prevailed from 1880 through 1940, when the figure peaked, Pew found. Yet in those decades, the most common arrangement for young adults was living with a spouse rather than with parents.
“We’ve simply got a lot more singles,” said Richard Fry, lead author of the report and a senior economist at the Pew Research Center. “They’re the group much more likely to live with their parents.”
The typical U.S. woman now marries at 27.1 years old, the typical man at 29.2, according to census data. That’s up from record lows of 20.1 for women and 22.5 for men in 1956.
“They’re concentrating more on school, careers and work and less focused on forming new families, spouses or partners and children,” Fry said of the millennials.
The shift may also be disrupting the housing market. One mystery that has confounded analysts since housing began to recover in 2012 is why there aren’t more homes for sale. The lack of available houses has driven up prices and made it less affordable for many would-be purchasers to buy homes.
Nela Richardson, chief economist at real estate brokerage Redfin, says one explanation for the sparse supply is that many baby boomers aren’t able to sell their family homes and downsize for retirement because they still have adult children living with them. Redfin recently surveyed homeowners ages 55 to 64 and found that one-fifth still have adult children at home.
“Because there are so many boomers and so many millennials, it’s having a big effect on the housing market,” Richardson said.
Among young men, declining employment and falling wages are another factor keeping many of today’s 18-to-34-year-olds unmarried, Fry said. The share of young men with jobs fell to 71 percent in 2014, the report found, from 84 percent in 1960 — the year when the proportion of young adults living outside the home peaked.
Incomes have fallen as well: Wages, adjusted for inflation, plunged 34 percent for the typical young man from 2000 to 2014.
Other factors contributing to the trend of living with parents range from rising apartment rents to heavy student-debt loads to longer periods in college.
Many analysts had expected that as the economy improved, younger adults would increasingly move out on their own. That hasn’t happened. Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, says soaring rents are discouraging some millennials from leaving their parents’ homes.
Kolko’s research, based on more recent data, has found that the share of young adults living with their parents in the first quarter of 2016 was essentially unchanged from two years earlier.
Median rents nationwide were surging at a 6 percent annual pace as recently as August, though they have slowed since. In fast-growing cities like San Francisco, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, rents rose last year at a double-digit pace.
Heavier student debt loads have sent more young people back to their parents’ nests, according to research last year by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Other economists aren’t convinced that student debt plays a dominant role. They note that the proportion of young adults without college degrees who live with parents is especially high: Nearly 39 percent of those with only a high school degree were living with a parent in 2014, up from around 26 percent in 2000.
That compares with just 19 percent of young adult college grads living at home in 2014. That figure, though, is up sharply from 11 percent in 2000.
20 responses to “Millennials increasingly likely to live with parents”
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Because of O’s economy…lack of jobs…..worst low GDP for the last 8 years for any potus tenure in American history?
Did you blame Obama for you taking longer than normal on the toilet today too?
Also, your understanding of math is profoundly bad.
Compare the size of the American economy over time. Tell me why you think it’s normal for a $19 trillion economy to grow at the same rate as a $10 trillion economy. Also, you don’t seem to understand that a smaller percentage growth on a much larger base is larger then a larger percentage on a small base. The same reason why China’s nominal growth now is much larger at 6% then it was at 10% when its economy was much smaller.
For your little brain, try it this way, would you rather than 3% payment on sales of $30 million, or 6% on $9 million?
I hit a nerve?
Seems so. Could it be that someone, no names, but begins with “C”, IS a stay-at-home millennial?? So shocked that life is hhhhaaaarrrd when getting started. Must climb back into mommy’s pouch, play video games, not share expenses with aging parents, etc. Seems we’ve gone from the greatest generation to the vapid generation.
A logic which could have been applied after every single recession we’ve ever had, therefore vacuous.
So choyd what is the problem? Why are Millennials increasingly likely to live with parents? Your hero should spend more time on the toilet as he is full of it.
The lack of good jobs is not due to Obama but the truth is, so many of the full-employment jobs out there do not pay a livable wage. Many of my generation will live at home to survive. It does not mean we are not ambitious. As for me, I live in a subsidized dorm at the UH but must leave in August when I graduate. Then, the streets. Or Palani’s estate in Laie? 🙂
You left something out. Let me fix that for you.
“…jobs out there do not pay a livable wage–for gender studies majors.””
that is not my major!
Pre-K basket weaving?
History of indian reservations–at pizza restaurants?
Blender studies?
Trans blogging? (Think I’m getting close.)
If people get a good education and/or job skills, they can get a good job with a “livable wage”. Unemployment is low now and companies are struggling to find qualified people.
Then, of course, we have people who don’t finish school or learn a trade and then want an easy high paying job. Sorry, that never existed in the past and will never come about in the future.
In Hawaii, we are using money that SHOULD be used to support the elderly in their last years, and instead using it to provide free housing, food, and medical for able-bodied people who choose to freeload rather than work. So I suspect society WANTS the children of working-class parents to live at home indefinitely, so the elderly will have someone to take care of them and we can spend money on people who chose to never work at all. Eventually the working class will disappear.
Sociologist have been experimenting with the established fabrics of our society some some bad. Go back to after the baby boomers generation and witness the liberalization of credit and how purchase have eased. Even the Government encourages and abet the loosening of sound credit principle which in turn contribute to “conspicuous consumption” resulting in debt creation. Home ownership as depicted in the “American Dream” increased many fold after WW II. 2/3rds of the college graduates currently are shackled with outstanding loans of $50K or more. Liberalization of credit lending which is supposed to be good for the economy has ills also. Most of the Millennials live at home not by choice, but out of necessity. Price of progress, don’t have clue?
This appears to be more true in Hawaii than on the mainland. High cost of housing and the cost of living are probably the biggest factors. Or, it could be a cultural thing since the practice has been going on even when housing was much cheaper.
However, it also has to be due to poor choices among people. I see a couple of houses in my neighborhood where several adults with families are living with their parents. Those younger adults are also buying new suvs and trucks quite frequently – the result is that they will never save enough money to get their own homes.
This even affects everyone around them – it downgrades the neighborhood with vehicles cluttering the streets. Most people park their cars in their garages and driveways and the area looks nice and open except around these homes.
Why would they want to move when they can get some little job and buy whatever they want while getting free food, laundry done and free rent. I don’t know why I thought it was so wonderful to be independent and have my own place and make my own way. LOL
They can’t get a good job and have to live at home yet they have the latest I Phone, eat out all the time and go to Starbucks. Maybe they need to learn out to budget.
Too smart to live on their own or they are smart enough to take advantage of their parents. Or better yet – highly educated but can’t figure out how to budget and live within their means. Whatever, they are Akamai alright from joining the homeless people of which is their true status and title!