Pew notes that this is not a record high percentage for the number of young people living at home – in 1940, for instance, approximately 35 percent of people in that age range lived at home. Dating back to 1880, the most common living arrangement among young adults has been living with a romantic partner, whether a spouse or a significant other.
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Researchers say that the Great Recession is not exclusively to blame, but more young adults are living at their parents’ homes for longer periods of time, and in some cases they never left. Yet in those decades, the most common arrangement for young adults was living with a spouse rather than with parents.Weve simply got a lot more singles, said Richard Fry, lead author of the report and a senior economist at the Pew Research Center.
Men living with parents has been the most dominant living arrangement since 2009, the survey said.
Establishing a new family, in a new home, “is not almost as important as it was for [today’s] young adults”, Richard Fry, a senior researcher with Pew, told the Wall Street Journal. Even those who have jobs are making less than they would have in their parents’ day – for young men, Pew notes, inflation-adjusted wages have been falling since 1970. Today not so: More people choose an alternate living situation, and out of the crowded field of choices, life with mom and/or dad has become the top pick for millennials.
Men were also more likely than women to live in the home of another family member, non-relative or in group lodgings.
Those who are cohabitating with spouses and domestic partners are at 31.5%.
Why are so many young people postponing their flight fom the parental nest?
For the first time in more than 130 years of record-keeping, young adults in the United States are more likely living with mom and dad than they are living with a spouse or partner..
Shifts in employment and pay may also play a role.
About 36 percent of young adults without college degrees are living at home with their parents, while only 27 percent are married or cohabiting.
Start with young adults’ reluctance to marry early – or ever. Rates of living with a spouse or partner were 17 percent for blacks, 30 percent for Hispanics, and 36 percent for whites.
Pew attributed the overall increase in millennials living at home to “a variety of factors”, including “the postponement of, if not retreat from, marriage”, pointing out that “the median age of first marriage has risen steadily for decades”.
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ISU economist Dave Swenson said rent and cost of living have gone up sharply in the US, but wages have not.
