More Than Half of Young Adults Are Now Living With Parents

The economic crisis during the pandemic broke the usual living standards even in the most developed countries. The loss of permanent income and the ability to pay for housing forces already adult citizens to move to live with their parents. The latest follow-up indicates that over 50% of individuals in the United States who are below 30 years old are currently residing with their parents, marking a significant increase.

In the US, according to the Pew Research Center, 52% of people 18-29 years old already live with their parents. This is a record for the entire history of observations - even during the Great Depression and World War II, the proportion of such people did not exceed 48%. The lowest percentage of people living with their parents was recorded in America in the prosperous 60s - 29%. Since then, the proportion of those who are in no hurry to live separately has only grown.

Traditionally, the indicator increased in difficult times: for example, in 2000 it was 38%, and in 2010, after the financial crisis, it was already 44%. In February 2020, 47% of young people living with their parents. And in six months of the pandemic, another 2.5 million people moved to their parents. The steepest increases were seen in young whites aged 18-24, with 9% of respondents in this group saying that they moved back to their parents due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. 23% of them had their dorms closed, and 18% lost their jobs or faced other financial difficulties.

The situation is alarming not only in the United States: Deloitte surveyed 27.5 thousand people around the world. Nearly a third of Gen Z (zero borns) and a quarter of millennials (born 1981-1996) surveyed reported in early May that they had lost their jobs or were sent on temporary unpaid leave. Only a third of millennials and 38% of Gen Zers said the pandemic had no impact on their employment and income.

Some young people, however, on the contrary, of their own free, will move to their parents in order to brighten up the limited communication during the period of quarantine measures. Overall, however, this trend runs counter to the American mentality of early independence. Suffice it to recall the high-profile lawsuit in 2018, when parents from New York state through the court evicted their 30-year-old son from their home, who could not provide himself with housing. The judge took the side of the parents, considering that 30 years is too much.

Experts believe that this phenomenon could have long-term consequences not only for the mentality and culture of family relations in America but also for its economy. Thus, even before the crisis, the growth in the number of new households lagged behind population growth, which threatens to reduce the market for household goods, as well as the market for the sale and rental of housing.

Crisis periods often force young people to move to their parents in other countries. This trend is observed in Greece and Spain, and especially strongly in Italy, where about 65 percent of grown children (from 18 to 34 years old) live with their parents. In addition to financial reasons, cultural traditions and strong ties with the older generation play an important role here. But in most countries of the Old World, the situation was previously the opposite.

In China, for example, millennials do their best to live independently and about 70 percent succeed. The fact is that for young people in the Celestial Empire, their own housing is a strong help in fierce competition in the marriage field because in this the Chinese demography is not in favor of men: there are noticeably more grooms than brides.