Some millennials and Gen Zers are still opting to live with their parents, especially in the Northeast and the West.
A new Pew Research Center analysis looked at where younger Americans, ages 25 to 34, lived in a parent’s home in 2023; cities in Texas, Florida, and California had the highest shares of these home-dwellers.
Five of the six metros with the highest shares were in California, with about a third of younger adults living in a parent’s home. Meanwhile, the Midwest and the South had the lowest shares of young adults living with parents.
Young people are much more likely to live with their parents when jobs are hard to come by and wages are stagnant, Pew researcher Richard Fry, who authored the report, told BI. Previous Pew research also found that Black, Hispanic, and Asian young adults were more likely than their white counterparts to live with their parents.
“This may be reflecting economic differences in terms of being able to afford to live independently, and it also may be reflecting some cultural differences,” Fry said.
There’s also a gender gap: 20% of young adult men lived with a parent, while just 15% of women fell into that category.
The share of younger Americans living with their parents has dropped in recent years, coming down to 18% in 2023, but it’s still well above historic lows in the 1970s. The 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession supercharged the trend, with many young adults living in their parents’ homes for years after.
Many recent college graduates and millennials found themselves back in their parents’ homes when the pandemic hit, closing schools and forcing widespread remote work. As of 2022, some Gen Zers considered it a more permanent arrangement, especially as housing costs and inflation raised the barriers to living independently.
A 2023 Pew survey found that nearly two-thirds of young adults who were living with their parents said it was good for their wallets. “Even if you got a job, even if earnings are coming in, as a young adult, you may indeed want to live with your parents because it improves your finances,” Fry said.
Perhaps surprisingly, local housing markets didn’t seem to have much influence on younger people living at home. The Pew analysis found that housing costs weren’t strongly correlated with the rates of younger Americans living at a parent’s home.
As BI previously reported, the reliance of Gen Z and millennials on their parents has led to new conversations on when — or if — to cut off support. After all, Gen Zers are facing their own set of economic hurdles, which may only be accentuated in another downturn.
It’s not clear how the trend will change in the coming years — much depends on how well the US economy fares. And whether young adults rent or buy their own homes will have implications for the US economy, broadly, as well as their personal finances.
“Household formation is important for the national economy, so in terms of an economic driver, this is a bad thing,” Fry said. But, if living with parents helps young adults “manage their finances and maintain their credit scores and be able to pay their student loan payments, that’s probably a good thing.”
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