A record 36.4% of young women were living at home with their parents or other relatives a year ago, the highest share of the population since Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president.
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Fry says young women are staying home now because they are half as likely to be married as they were in 1940 and much more likely to be college-educated. Higher rates of college attendance and later-in-life marriages also play a role keeping millennials at home, Pew says.
While not a record, the percentage of men ages 18 to 34 living with their parents is even higher, at 42.8 percent.
College students enrolled part-time or at community college were more likely to live at home, Pew found, with 45 percent living at home in 2014 compared to 33 percent of young women not in college. “Usually when you think about college you think about living in dorms”, says Richard Fry, a Senior Researcher with Pew Research Center, who specializes in school and college enrollment in the United States, as well as the returns to education in the labor market and marriage market, and its connection to household economic well-being such as net worth.
“But then the logical side of me kicked in and said ‘It’s just fiscally responsible”.
For instance, as Pew’s report notes, women are less likely to be married than they were in the past; the median age for women to be married for the first time is now 27, up from 21.5 in 1940. In the past, especially in the 1970s when there were more jobs available doing industrial, clerical, manufacturing and retail work, it was easier for young people to become independent more quickly. 1940 is the earliest year for comparable data.
We’ve been calling them “boomerang kids” for a solid decade now, but the label apparently hasn’t motivated today’s young adults to move out of their childhood bedrooms. “Unemployment has come down, more have jobs and a few are even getting paid a bit more”.
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There are bumps, like when she fails to tidy up or check in with her parents regularly.
