In England, about 950,000 more young adults are living with their parents now versus 10 years ago. To scale, that’s about the size of San Jose, California, or the cities of Sacramento, California and Kansas City, Missouri combined. What a drag. Who wants to live with their parents?
Despite unemployment rates improving, the amount of young adults still living at home is on the rise. In America, around 21.6 million “millennials” (born between 1980 and roughly 2000) still live at home with their parents. Pew Research breaks the reasoning down into three different categories as to why these young adults would ever want to stick around at their parents.
1. The Economic Factor
The percentage of people who still lived at home stayed about the same for the four decades before the recession. But then came along the 2008 economic crash and people who normally would have found a decent job after high school significantly decreased. That all makes sense, but the crazy part isn’t how many people stayed at home during the recession, but pre-recession figures were high too. 50% of 18-24 year olds lived at home before 2008. And one in seven late twenty somethings still lived at home. Why!? Well the government has an odd definition of “living at home,” and that includes living in a dormitory. So for these 18-29 year olds who were attending college, they were counted as still living at home. That’s by far one of the least questionable things the government has done, but it is odd. At any rate, this leads us to the next factor: College.
2. The Educational Factor
Since the economy crashed, college enrollment increased by 4%. More education (usually) means a more stimulated economy and better jobs for young adults. That’s a pretty big factor in the living-at-home number since dorm rooms still somehow count as living at home. Ultimately, this is a good thing.
3. The Marriage Factor
Lastly, the economic crash led to less people getting married, and single people are six-times more likely to live at home than married couples are. Marriage has been on the decline in the last 50 years, and the economy hurt those numbers even more. As crazy as it might seem, happily married couples are much happier than single people who are married.