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Home Is ... Where The Parents Are? Young Adults Officially More Likely To Live With Mom Than Mrs.

This article is more than 7 years old.

For the first time in 130 years, a young adult in 2014 was more likely to live with a parent than a significant other. This is per a new Pew Research Center analysis of census data, which shows 32.1% of 18-to-34-year-olds lived in a parent's home that year, compared to the 31.6% who lived with a spouse or romantic partner.

This dominance switch is significant not just because it represents a nadir in the debate about what the heck Millennials are doing with their lives, but also because as far back as 1880 "romantic coupling" had been the most common living arrangement for people in this age range. A slew of demographic shifts have led to this point, including changes to prevailing marital, educational and employment statuses--and not just since the Great Recession.

"What has changed," write the Pew authors, "is the relative share adopting different ways of living in early adulthood, with the decline of romantic coupling pushing living at home to the top of a much less uniform list of living arrangements." Case in point: back in 1940, 35% of young people lived with their parents, 46% were married or cohabiting and fewer than 20% living with roommates, in a dorm or alone. Compare that to today --

Marital Status

Since historically 5% or less of married young adults have lived with parents, Pew argues, today's living arrangement mix is largely due to fewer and later marriages. The supremacy of the young-couple-household peaked at 62% around 1960, a time that Pew calls the "heyday" of the nuclear family. Back then only one-in-ten people over age 25 had never married and the median first marriage age was 20 for women, 22 for men. Today, one-in-five adults have never married and the median ages are 27 and 29. Meanwhile, Pew projects that as many as a quarter of current young adults may never wed.

"Single young adults are many times more likely to live with mom and/or dad. So the shift away from marriage can account for the entire increase in living with parents since 1960," writes Pew. "This does not imply, however, that the shift away from marriage has 'caused' the increase in living with parents, because other social and economic factors may have reduced the attractiveness of marriage for young adults and, at the same time, made living independently of parents more difficult."

Employment and Wages

The image of the unemployed 20-somethings living in mom and dad's basement has become a popular trope for the ravages of the Great Recession, which left a disproportionate share of young people without jobs. While the growth of young adults living with parents predates the downturn--28% of young adults lived at home in 2007, up from 20% in 1960--it is clear that people without jobs are less likely to get a place of their own.

The relationship between employment and habitation is clearest among young men. Young male employment peaked around 1960 at 84% of men. By 2014, only 71% of 18-to 34-year-old men were employed. Meanwhile, the more a young man earns the less likely he is to live with parents and wages for the group have been trending down since 1970, with a significant decline from 2000 to 2010. The share of young men living with parents increased as wages fell, becoming the most common living arrangement for the group in 2009.

"The decades immediately after World War II have been described as the 'golden age of wage labor for young men,'" explains Pew. "This enabled young men to marry earlier in life, stoked a marriage boom and resulted in record low rates of young men living with their parents." Women, meanwhile, remain more likely to be living in a couple than with parents, though that may change soon.

Educational Attainment & Race 

The increasing share of young people living in a parent's home has occurred across gender, racial and ethnic lines, but some groups have clearly been hit harder and faster than others. The best predictors of whether a person lives with parents are race and whether they graduated from college. Of people who concluded their education with only a high school diploma 29% live at home. For college graduates, the share plummets to 19%. A young black person has been more likely to live with a parent than a partner since 1980--the crossover has not yet occurred for young white people. The report explains: "Trends in living arrangements for specific groups of young adults indicate that the crossover is being driven by the experiences of more economically disadvantaged young adults, specifically, less-educated young adults and some racial and ethnic minorities."

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