A new Pew Research report finds that the number of single adults still living with their parents is at historically high levels — in the US, the number of singles still at home outnumber the cohort of those living out of the house, something last seen in the 1880s.
It's not just in the USA, either. Young people all over the world are staying with their parents in record numbers.
The numbers cant be attributed solely to low wages and delayed marriage — some of the blame has to go to record-high property values in most of the world's great cities, driven by offshore speculators who want to smuggle their money out of autocratic unstable countries and park it in a relatively liquid asset-class, the "safe deposit box in the sky."
Cities from Vancouver to New York to Toronto to Miami to London to Paris now sport apartment blocks and streets whose occupancy is lower than at any time, even as the value of those properties increases monotonically, tempting even more speculators into the market. In many cases, the absentee owners are breaking their own countries' laws by owning property overseas (as the Panama Papers revealed, offshore money-laundries are a favorite way of evading detection); what's more, many of these countries prohibit the people who live abroad from buying property in their cities.
These trends break down differently across genders. Since 2009, a higher share of men ages 18 to 34 have been living with mom and/or dad than with a partner in their own home. In 2014, 28 percent were living as part of a romantic couple, while 35 percent were living with parents. Young women, meanwhile, are actually still more likely to be living with a spouse or partner (35 percent) than they are to be living with their parents (29 percent). But they, too, are approaching that threshold.Education levels have played a significant role in determining who is living at home and who is on their own. As the chart to the left shows, young people without college degrees are more and more likely to be living under their parents’ roofs than their more-educated peers.
In the U.S. and abroad, more young adults are living with their parents
[Drew DeSilver/Pew Research Center]
Why 2014 Marked a Historic Shift in Housing Arrangements
[Laura Bliss/Citylab]
(Image: Kids room, Jinkazamah, CC-BY)
