Due to waning housing affordability, a growing number of Americans continue to live with their parents into adulthood.
Living With Parents
Chris Salviati at Apartment List notes More young adults now live with their parents than at any point since 1940
In 1970, just 7 percent of 25 to 35 year-olds lived in their parents’ homes, but as of 2022, that share has more than doubled to 17 percent.
When viewed over a long horizon, the share of young adults who live with their parents1 exhibits a U-shaped trend. In 1940, with the Great Depression still close in the rearview mirror, 17 percent of 25 to 35 year-olds lived at home. But in the ensuing decades, the postwar economic boom and rapid buildup of America’s suburbs enabled more young people to strike out on their own. From 1940 to 1960, the share of young adults living at home fell by more than half to 8 percent, and remained fairly stable at that level through 1980.
Living with parents became slightly more common from 1980 to 2000, and from 2000 to today that growth has picked up even more steam. As of 2022 (the most recent Census data currently available) 17 percent of America’s young adults live with their parents, a rate that is more than double what it was during the low period from 1960 through 1980. The likelihood of 25 to 35 year-olds living with their parents has returned to a level not seen since 1940.
Another way of thinking about this trend is to make the comparison across generational cohorts. The chart below shows the percentage of adults who live with their parents at each age from 25 to 35, broken out by generation. As expected, we see living with parents become less common with age (i.e., it is more likely at age 25 than at age 35). More importantly, we also see the curves gradually shift up for each consecutive generation, as living with parents has become increasingly common over the course the past half-century.