Gen Z is usually considered to have been born between 1996 and 2012 -- so yeah, it's not shocking that a generation whose youngest are middle schoolers still mostly lives at home.
Yeah, and a good proportion of those adults are just starting university. In this rental economy, and with the personal finance wisdom being broadly shared in the last few years, it's still absolutely not shocking that zoomers are staying home while they can (and in particular, longer than millennials).
its actually another hit on them: they have to chose college nearby so they can live with parents, and not necessary good one which accepted them because of rise in education costs.
On the flip side the youngest millennials are 28 years old by that standard. It's significant that 20% of that group haven't been able to move away from family.
No argument from me -- I agree with you, it's a reflection of the state of the economy right now. My other comment was mostly a reaction to the stigma that often surrounds living at home past university (or even sometimes high school) graduation, and how it seems like an increasingly unreasonable standard to hold people to.
I see. I used to look askance at stories of living with parents from a place like Italy back in the early 2000s, but in retrospect they were the canary in the coal mine. This is becoming a global phenomenon. It's hiding standards of living that are falling fast for younger generations. It's easier to keep people off the poverty rolls when they can move back in with parents and forgo starting families of their own.
It’s not the state of the entire economy. It’s one thing: housing prices. Most other economic stats are fine or even good.
Tuition and health care are also problems, but housing cost disease is the one that is most pervasive and affects the most people.
The root cause is mostly a supply problem due to bad zoning, bad regulations, and NIMBYs. This is exacerbated by prolonged extremely low interest rates flooding a constrained market with cash.
The economy is a bogus argument because you can always blame the economy for not moving out.
If the economy is bad then you can't move out.
If the economy is good well then it is just about to get bad so you can't move out either.
There was never a time in the past that renting didn't eat up most of your money. I didn't know anyone who moved out when I moved out that wasn't also dead broke. This was in the mid 90s though and it was the most magical time to be on your own and young. I don't think I would bother moving out now though if I was young because why pay so much more money just to fuck off on your phone in your own apartment instead of your parent's basement?
The economics are pretty much the same. The culture though is night and day different.
> It's significant that 20% of that group haven't been able to move away from family.
They may not have wanted to?
It all depends on the individuals, one family member still lives with their parents and everybody seems to be just fine with it. Not everybody wants to start a family of their own and not everybody looks to get away from home right after they turn 18.
The culture wide spread in many parts of the US pushes people out of the house around the time they become adults to a point where it people might have looked down on you if you didn't (e.g. typical stereo type of the incompetent loser living in their parents basement).
While this clearly never applied to all of the US it applied to a significant part of it.
Now if culture would have massively changed wrt. how family constructs are seen that could explain the increase but AFIK there was no such change.
So in my opinion it's pretty clear that a main driving factor of this increase is that living in your own household has gotten dam expensive. Too expensive.
And yes you can re-frame it as "they don't want to" (because it's to expensive). But that misses the point.
If you aren't married with kids, what's the point of moving away?
There's efficiency in living under the same roof (unless you hate each other's guts). Especially when you consider how huge and wasteful USA single family homes are.
What's the baseline for that "significant" judgement though?
Scroll down the article a bit and you'll see an age-aligned comparison. The percentage of at-homers has only grown 7% since Boomers stole all the jobs and land.
The relative cost of property/rent to income makes this trend really simple to understand.
Yup, I've always found it strange that American parents immediately kick out their children at the age of 18. The United States in general seems to practice an unhealthy amount of individualism.
I don't know anyone who was kicked out of their home at age 18 if that would have made them homeless, so I think you're painting with a broad brush. It definitely happens, but it's not as commonplace as you're making it out to be. I doubt there's much difference between the US and northern Europe on this issue.
>It definitely happens, but it's not as commonplace as you're making it out to be.
It's very, very commonplace for LGBTQ children in America. Their Christian parents kick them to the curb as soon as they possibly can and disown them. There's constant postings on Reddit about it, from these poor kids who don't know where to turn for help.
We don’t, though. See the generational stats in the article. Still living with family at age 22 appears to be more common than not, back to and including the “Boomers”.
This is just unthinkable to me. It seems so cruel, too. I'm the child of an immigrant and the expectation was always: "live at home as long as you need, even if it's forever."
And especially once adult children have their own children, it seems unthinkable to have a baby and a recovering mother in the house without help from grandmother and aunts.
It goes all the way back to the Bible - teach a man to fish…. There’s no guarantee someone will always be able to support you, so it’s in your own interests to be able to support yourself.
I've always found it strange that American parents immediately kick out their children at the age of 18
I'm not sure where you got that idea, but that's an inaccurate, incredibly broad generalization. I would say that the historical impetus for kids moving out at 18 has been due to graduating from high school and "going off to college".
Doubtful. Most people did not go to college when this policy was more normal than it is today. When my father turned 18 in the early 60's he was told he had to leave home. The impetus was to get out in the world and start making money.
So I was told the same thing when I was young that when I turn 18 I would have to leave. It was stressful to be honest but overall I am not sure it is a bad thing. The old adage of a baby bird will never fly if it isn't kicked from the nest seems to best encapsulate this idea and how it was present and executed to me. While jarring and terrifying it is ultimately for their own benefit.
That does sound stressful. At least it seems like you've been able to retrospectively find some positive.
But I've literally never heard of kids being told they had to leave home at 18, unless it's the foster care system where kids "age out" (even then, laws have changed recently to extend this to 21).
As a parent, I cannot imagine telling my kids they have to leave, especially at a relatively very young age/maturity. Our kids leaving home comes up occasionally in conversations, most commonly perhaps with the typically exasperated parent retort of the genre of "well you can decide differently when you live on your own!"
But even then, my kids have said things like "what if I don't want to live on my own?" And we always follow up with: "Then you can stay here as long as you want. This will always be your home."
I really don't feel like our attitude in this respect is different from most other parents we know. But of course families can be very different, and I'm now aware that your experience may be more common that I previously thought.
I don't think that is representative of most American families. Most of the time, it is the kid who wants to leave their parents house to be independent rather than the other way around.
I stayed in my house one year after I turned 18, and it was a huge mistake, especially since I was commuting almost 2 hours a day to university, but also...well, rent wasn't that high back then...I found a room for $215/month near UW in 1994.
These days I don't think that value proposition exists anymore.
From what I understand working poor and those on government assistance may not have a choice in keeping adult age children at home. The children might feel pressure to move out because of privacy and limited resources in the home. If they are working their income is included in calculating the amount of assistance received against the household.
There is also the societal pressure to find a place of your own for privacy.
Also if you’re in university you might only have guaranteed room and board first year. I know I didn’t have a choice after my sophomore year. No matter how much I protested I was required to find off campus housing.
It’s particularly strange when considering how ill-equipped most college-age people are to function as adults, with major gaps in knowledge being left by parents and schooling alike. American teens are rarely set up for success.
It’s way more economically efficient to combine households but I don’t quite get how people individuate in such a culture.
I moved out as soon as I could, and if I hadn’t I don’t think I would have had half the life experience. It’s just hard to do that without any privacy.
It’s not that my parents were tyrannical. It’s more like a chilling effect.
Not only that, but it's a relatively recent trend. Multi-generational living was the norm even in America until the mid 20th century. When are people going to realize that post WWII America was an aberration?
I believe this is semi-normal in Italy and other southern European countries, among other places like Asia, Africa. Maybe not so much Northern European countries.
Name another country with an economy as dynamic as the US where the adults choose to stay with their parents. I’m aware this is the norm in other cultures yet it’s born out of necessity, rarely a choice. Where this is the norm usually young adult unemployment is in the double digits.
Economic dynamism, however you would measure such a thing, is not the best explanation for this. Housing prices are. If housing is affordable, people tend to leave extended family situations to be in their own dwelling.
It's probably more about politics than culture in Singapore. Most people live in public housing, because open market housing is expensive. But the eligibility criteria for public housing make it difficult for young people to move out.
You can’t get a flat in Singapore until 35, 21 if married. Staying at home is not a choice, you’re forced to or be rich enough to buy a million dollar flat.
India is at #9 and it's very common here too. It's become even more so in the tech sector after remote work. Almost all of my single colleagues live with their parents. And even some of the married ones live with parents or in-laws.
I can understand the appeal - no rentals to pay, way lower cost of living if the parents live in a non-metropolitan area, and - if you have kids - you have someone to take care of them during your meetings.
> China is listed at the #2 dynamic economy and it is common there.
I don't think that is really true, at least for kids going to university. In fact, lots of kids virtually move out before they are even finished with high school because boarding schools are so much more common there. After they graduate from university, it is very very common for young adults to live in another city, visiting home maybe once or twice a year.
I was raised in the American South and grew up knowing it to be normal. That has changed as a norm though, and now when parents get old they move in with/near to whoever can take care of them best.
I moved out at 19, and it was one of the happiest days in my life. Being able to pay rent on my own and not experience constant fights and verbal abuse is awesome.
Americans really tend to look at a lot of things from other cultures that they haven't experienced personally with rose tinted glasses. That's because people rarely talk about what they implicitly consider normal. For most people in my culture (Russian) everyday verbal and psychological abuse was and still is just norm of family life, and physical abuse is probably too for almost the majority.
Yeah there's definitely give and take and now is a great time to discuss such things and have that conversation. Especially as there's many factors involved here and it's not strictly the living at home vs not variable. Guaranteed counfounder for the outcomes you're looking at. But I will mention one "drawback", is I notice a tendency for people of these cultures to be less independent. Which is rather unsurprising just given the circumstances but also is related to the larger cultural aspect of tighter knit families (which has benefits and drawbacks too!). College and early post college is a big learning time for many Americans as they learn to be independent. But also in this time it is far less common to see parents move in with their children (long term or temporarily) to help with such things like adapting to your own place, new city, or starting a family, whereas such things are more common among the cultures you reference. Boy there's a lot to unpack here and I think we only scratched the surface. Definitely not saying one is better than the other but rather that there's a lot more at play here.
Given this is just US-sourced, generation-on-generation data, and culturally, the US is pretty homogeneous (a few percent deviation). We're talking about 15 year windows so I wouldn't expect "culture" to change this fast, so I don't think your point applies.
The headline advertised a colossal shift in "norm" over just ~15 years.
Except that it's silly bait. Millennials are ~15y older than Gen Z. Of course more Zoomers are at their parents' home, they're practically still kids.
This is accounted for further down the page at "what they did at 34/22". The increase is actually very slight. Far less than the headline suggests and immediately understandable based on the house price and rent trends as percentage of income.
> Overall, Millennials are slower when it comes to leaving the nest compared to previous generations: 18% of Baby Boomers and 17% of Gen X were living with their parents at the same age as today's average Millennials. Likewise, Zoomers also struggle: By 22 years old, 66% of Millennials, 65% of Gen X and 61% of Baby Boomers were still at home, which was surpassed by a 68% share of Gen Z.
There, the part of this that makes the bare stats mean anything whatsoever.
So trending up, but not significantly, fully agreed this is hardly worth a thing.
Labor participation rate is another thing to track, more of GenZ is attending college rather than embracing independence and going to work than all other cohorts so its not surprising.
I mean, isn’t it obvious why? There was just an article posted to HN a few days ago that says the required income to buy a house effectively increased 50% since 2019. Wages for millennial age experience definitely haven’t increased the same amount.
If you factor in the growing portion of people going to undergrad, those stats may correspond to downward movement in the proportion of young adults living with parents for significant periods after completing education.
My sister is a young millennial in her late 20s and lives at home with our mom. They live in Los Angeles. My sister will likely NEVER be able to afford to buy a house in Los Angeles, and there is no sense in paying rent when our mom is happy for the company.
My mom is an immigrant, and she has always welcomed her adult children to live with her (even to the point of insistence). I fully expect to go live with her when she reaches her elderly years. I'm even kind of looking forward to it. I live across the country from my whole family and this has been a very isolating experience, even if it was my choice to do so.
I don't think it is weird for adults to live with their family. I actually think it's weirder and more unnatural NOT to live near or close to your family.
Would it still be "her house" or more of a grandma-lives-with-us-situation?
My sister lived with her kids and husband under the same roof with my mother and the situation was extremely complicated because my sister always were to be a guest in a way.
You know, with my mom being a single mom, I think there is something of an interdependency between her and her youngest child (my sister). Possibly even a codependency. That is to say: there is no real power struggle between them. They accept their roles as mother and daughter pretty well. They share their space effectively because they both accept their roles. If my sister were to exert more of a commanding influence on the household, there could be conflict, but so far this has not been the case.
Millennial here. If I didn’t hit the tech job lotto I would still be living with my parents with my wife and kids. It’s a shitty cycle. You have kids, and it’s either my wife stays home or she works and gives all her wage to daycare. The only way to stay positive financially is to get “free” help which is to have your parents take care of their grandkids. I know the alternative is to just not have kids, but it absolutely sucks how it feels financially impossible it is to have kids.
Do your parents nor desperately desire to spend time with their grandkids? Mine (and my wife's) make drop-of-the-hat multi-day visits across state lines, often precipitated by nothing more than us sending a cute picture of the baby. My wife's mom is just waiting for us to send an adequate signal that she should quit working to spend more time with our kids.
I think there’s a difference between need and want though. My parents would drive 8hr+ to see their grandkids for 2-3 days but my comment was more about how grandparent child care is needed in our generation.
You're saying that you wish there were some way that neither grandparent nor parent had to stay home with the children, other than spending a full salary on childcare, right?
I guess my instinct is that all worthwhile pursuits require sacrifice and childrearing, being the most worthwhile pursuit, should reasonably take the most sacrifice. And I revel in the fact that, through decades of schooling and job experience and saving, I can keep my wife home with the kids and live in reasonable material comfort, just a little below the median income for equivalently sized households in my state.
Millennial checking in. My parents told me in no uncertain terms that I was on my own after high school. There was never any safety net. I found out much later in life how poor we were. It's very hard to escape both poverty and growing up with neglect, abuse and a lot of dysfunction. I'm actually amazed I'm not on drugs, in jail (or both), or just: dead.
Wow, that sounds sad. And in a way they probably did you a favor because that kind of influence doesn't help. In contrast: as long as I breathe my children will have a home to return to should they need it.
I don't know what you mean by favor, but I'll take your comment with grace.
I would suggest to anyone that growing up in an alcoholic family doesn't do anyone any favors. My parents so neglected their health that they both died before I turned 20, and before they reached 60. Unfortunately for me, neither had any savings, retirement, or life insurance.
As the son of an alcoholic father: I'm really happy that I didn't grow up there and if he'd have kicked me out if I did that would have been doing me a favor.
So yes, that was meant in a sympathetic way. And my dad too died young, but not quite that young.
I'm sorry to hear that too. I'm very glad to hear that you seem to be doing well. It's not always the case and the scars are oftetimes internal and invisible. Take care of yourself.
Thanks, and likewise! One thing for me: no alcohol, ever. That's the biggest remaining thing even though there are probably many others this one is the most outward visible. And what amazes me is the amount of peer pressure applied to get you to change from a resolution like that, it's just incredible how this seems to be some kind of red cloth for some people.
The whole, “my kids need to learn independence” idea is basically because parents are under financial duress. They’d rather be seen as strict than poor, because it makes them appear to have some power over their lives. Scarcity explains a lot of the policies in poorer areas. Every man for himself brings out the worst in people.
I didn't feel my parents were strict at all - perhaps the opposite. It didn't help that Dr. Spock put out a free range parenting book at about the same time. It was a great excuse for how they just didn't function themselves as parents or to a large part: adults themselves.
I did find them very neglectful. I had needs and they didn't do a great job in getting them met. This reinforces the idea that your needs aren't important, and you instead become a people pleaser later in life, in an attempt to "win" the love of others. That's very sick thinking.
I'm not for helicopter parents or anything, but there sure is a happy medium somewhere in there. I'm finding out now that I have very obvious learning and attention disabilities, and probably a touch of the 'tism. That should have been picked up relatively easy by the fact that I'm highly intelligent but had a complete lack of being able to do any homework, what-so-ever.
Of course the economics of moving out haven't gotten easier for younger folks, and there's a severe shortage of housing has made almost everything worse. Still, a few things to note:
- Since baby boomers were born, the US has gotten a lot more diverse.
- This is meaningful, because in a lot of cultures, multigenerational homes are the norm. There is a lot less pressure to move out just because one is an adult, and there's more emphasis on the family unit.
- It doesn't seem like a coincidence that diverse places like LA and NYC are more multigenerational. Yes of course they're also a lot more expensive, and it's not just a cultural thing.
We also have to account for the fact that NY and LA are also unreasonably expensive. I wouldn't be able to afford to live there, and I say this as a Canadian, a place known for high prices particularly in housing
Also multi generation home might be a red herring. Because in just about every country adults are supposed to support themselves. Multigenerational means you support your parents not that they support you. So the type of multigenerational homes we see rising today might not be reflective of different cultural preferences explainable by rising diversity
>Because in just about every country adults are supposed to support themselves.
China, India, and Latin America make up an extremely large portion the world's entire population, and families from there have had a growing presence in the US. Multigenerational housing is the norm there, and is absolutely not a red herring. Additionally, the focus is on supporting the family unit, not supporting in one specific direction.
I definitely agree that high prices (housing in particular) are contributing to this, but so is culture.
I'm not saying india doesn't have multi generational housing I'm saying the nature is different
It's traditionally not made up of adult children who are unable to support themselves. Instead it's made up of adult children supporting parents in their old age.
That's not the same thing we're seeing in the US where lots of millenials are staying home due to being unable to support themselves
>It's traditionally not made up of adult children who are unable to support themselves. Instead it's made up of adult children supporting parents in their old age.
This does not necessarily mean the parents are supporting their adult children directly, it also means mutual support.
An example: Parents will argue "Why move out and pay a lot to a random landlord when you're welcome here and can save money?".
It is not a free ticket to freeload, the child is expected to contribute in some manner to household (Pay rent, split bills, help with chores etc.). Parents from these aforementioned backgrounds actually encourage children to stay as long as they want, or at least until marriage. It is not seen as shameful that they're past 18 and still at home.
I'm not arguing that economics don't play a factor, but I believe that's only part of the reason.
Unfortunately, cars are so decidedly necessary to do anything on a daily basis that the multi-generational households can't save on cars as ought to be easy... With the exception that there should be no more than one pickup truck and one big people mover per house.
> there's a severe shortage of housing has made almost everything worse.
it is not clear there is severe shortage of housing in general, but there is another factor: houses were used as investment vehicle by rich people during 20 years of low interest rate, which drove price up significantly, and also decreased available(not total) inventory.
Houses wouldn't be an investment vehicle if there were enough of them that anyone who wanted would could reasonably afford one. This requires building a lot more than there are today.
> Investors wouldn't want 10 if prices were stagnant because there was plenty of supply.
yes, and prices were not stagnant because many rushed to buy with low interest risk free loans. And now they don't want to sell, because they can rent it for high.
> If housing isn't where people are, then no there isn't enough. About half the US population lives metropolitan areas.
even if 80% lives in metropolian areas, which I would totally believe, do you have any evidence that houses are not there too?
Do you not believe in supply and demand? What about housing makes it so exceptional that it's something that applies to everything else but not homes?
Were investors buying 10 cars at a time with low interest loans and regular people forced to buy/lease from them before the chip shortage? Why did cars only shoot up in price when it was difficult to obtain one?
Why does a country like Japan, with its declining population and plenty of housing not have a flood of investors buying tons of homes at once and flipping/renting them back to its population? Could it be because that would make a terrible investment?
That housing is an investment vehicle and not you know, just a home to live in, is the evidence. Homes aren't rising in prices where populations have declined and buyers aren't competing.
> What about housing makes it so exceptional that it's something that applies to everything else but not homes?
I wrote already: low interest risk free(because of foreclosure) loans. So this is risk free leveraged investment and even with tax benefits. I don't know anything else like that.
I heard a rumor (maybe myth) that part of the reason why serial killers phenomenon was very rare in the eastern hemisphere (in culture at least) is that it is hard to get the right circumstances given that most of the people lives and interact with a big family compared to the US for example.
I did not read about that or search it though. But it is an interesting idea.
That's of course not to say that this is the only benefit from living with family (if true).
I think it is also economically makes sense because in many of these countries it is very hard for young people to find a housing where they live specially in the big cities where there is more opportunities.
Also because of the centralized economy around capital city and a few cities it will but pressure on the housing market. Not like the US when there is much more diverse and spread economy.
I really miss living close to my extended family and be like 1 hour from most of them. Where I never been alone in any circumstances. But here is the US, I feel lonely and I don't think I am the only one.
Many of my friends have nice high five or six figure jobs and live with their parents into mid thirties. Not really sure why, but according to them rent is a complete waste of money. Partially true I guess, but also can lead to failure to launch.
I was definitely more broke working as a pizza guy and then at a university, but I valued my freedom much more. Lived paycheck to paycheck with very finely tuned finances, no savings just student loan payments. I survived on a diet of library media, books, torrented video games and super cheap beer. The interesting part was I felt relatively happy. Threw crappy parties where we'd all chip in to buy a bunch of 40s, and someone would dj. I didn't really start to "have some money" until I was about 30~ from university job, and then I quit for industry where I 3x'd (I cried that day, as I made more money than anyone in my family!)
I think now it's much easier to feel aspirational about money and hard to be happy with you lot when you're getting firehosed about how everyone is having a better time than you are and they have more money. Things are also much more expensive, especially after the pandemic.
There is value in coming home to your own couch and knowing the space is yours, and yours alone. Maybe tastes have changed. I know that in my life, every time I tried to outsmart and skip a step I feel like life threw me a set back to learn the lesson I tried to not learn :D.
When I was 7 years old one night my father was tucking me in bed and he said “Son, I just want you to know that we are expecting you to move out when you are 18.” So that was always clear.
Now that I have a couple of children in mid teens we don’t feel in any rush to show them the door.
I have seen the value in multigenerational homes and the abuses.
What I do seem to see more of right now are adult children living with parents but not taking on any responsibility for the collective needs of the home. Entertainment ( gaming, video, socialising, activities ) of self being the core activity and not contributing to the finances of the household, not taking on domestic chores, not intensely saving money for major life purchases. That does not reflect everyone who is still with parents as an adult, but it seems like it is a disturbingly large segment.
I think you’ve recognized a key nuance. The adult-aged child that retains the traits of a teenager vs the adult-aged child that takes on the traits of an adult.
We must first distinguish between can't and won't. Those who cannot leave the house, and those who will not leave. I claim that we have an uptick in the latter camp.
By his early 20s, and frankly sooner, a healthy human being wants to have his own life. He doesn't want to live on his parents' dime. Healthy parents also don't want their children in the nest anymore either, and it is their duty to, proverbially speaking, kick them out. What "leaving the nest" means in a given culture may vary (the article in question seems to be talking about the US), but in any healthy culture, there exists the same basic psychological emancipation from parental dependence, an emancipation willingly embraced or imposed by necessity. Loving parenting is a process of progressively removing training wheels and clipping tethers. The goal is to lead someone to becoming a man or a woman: in short, an adult. This means truthful and honest feedback instead of deceitful complements or excuses, upping the challenge, and being increasingly and accordingly demanding, so that by the time someone does leave the nest, the significance of the transition is largely in the symbolic act, not a change in responsibility they can't handle. Parents and adult children should be able to relate to one another as adults. If that's not happening, something is wrong.
In short, we have a problem with Peter Pan syndrome. An infantile, therapeutic culture of narcissistic self-indulgence makes this very easy. Mental illness is to be expected.
> We must first distinguish between can't and won't. Those who cannot leave the house, and those who will not leave. I claim that we have an uptick in the latter camp.
Nope. Things are just too expensive. Why move out a party extraordinary amount in rent when one can stay home, contribute to the bills for less, save up for a house and then move out? Make no mistake, there is such a think as unnecessary struggle.
> Those who cannot leave the house, and those who will not leave. I claim that we have an uptick in the latter camp.
No way. It's definitely the first.
When I was 22 years old in 2004, I was making $13/hour and the rent on my 1-bedroom apartment was $600/month. I have a friend that still works there, and he says the pay is now $21/hr, and the place I was renting is now $1,475/month. In 20 years, the pay is up only about 60%, but rents are up nearly 2.5x. He had to get a roommate to be able to afford rent.
It's ridiculous that a country as rich as the USA has had the standard of living DROPPING over time.
Choosing to stay in a collective household seems to be frowned upon but really it depends on the dynamic. There’s something to be said about having children close to grandparents.
Yeah, it rules! Every family is different, my parents and in-laws love spending time with their grandkids, and my spouse and I benefit a lot from having other responsible adults to keep an eye on the kids. The grandparents don't live in the same house as us, but this will likely change in the future and we think it would be a welcome arrangement.
My spouse and I share a house with my spouse's sibling. My spouse and I basically have total control of an upper floor, and my spouse's sibling has the bedroom on the lower floor. The arrangement works really well for us, and our bills are signifcantly lower. With this arrangement, we get to save quite a bit more for retirement, and there's one extra responsible adult to help out with childcare (which is huge). We could afford to live on our own, but do we really want to?
In the future, we expect to "live with our parents" again, but it will be because they will move in with us as they advance in years and need additional care. So, idk, the article seems to start with the assumption that living with family is undesirable and a result of financial stress. That's true for some, sure, but it can also just be the way people prefer to live.
It is very simple math. Average rent is $1,500/month where I live. I need to make $4,500/month to rent. So, $54,000/year. I need to make c. $30/hour. No one is paying that. Or, maybe I'm just garbage.
If you know where I can find safe and dependable roommates, HMU.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadTuition and health care are also problems, but housing cost disease is the one that is most pervasive and affects the most people.
The root cause is mostly a supply problem due to bad zoning, bad regulations, and NIMBYs. This is exacerbated by prolonged extremely low interest rates flooding a constrained market with cash.
If the economy is bad then you can't move out. If the economy is good well then it is just about to get bad so you can't move out either.
There was never a time in the past that renting didn't eat up most of your money. I didn't know anyone who moved out when I moved out that wasn't also dead broke. This was in the mid 90s though and it was the most magical time to be on your own and young. I don't think I would bother moving out now though if I was young because why pay so much more money just to fuck off on your phone in your own apartment instead of your parent's basement?
The economics are pretty much the same. The culture though is night and day different.
They may not have wanted to?
It all depends on the individuals, one family member still lives with their parents and everybody seems to be just fine with it. Not everybody wants to start a family of their own and not everybody looks to get away from home right after they turn 18.
While this clearly never applied to all of the US it applied to a significant part of it.
Now if culture would have massively changed wrt. how family constructs are seen that could explain the increase but AFIK there was no such change.
So in my opinion it's pretty clear that a main driving factor of this increase is that living in your own household has gotten dam expensive. Too expensive.
And yes you can re-frame it as "they don't want to" (because it's to expensive). But that misses the point.
There's efficiency in living under the same roof (unless you hate each other's guts). Especially when you consider how huge and wasteful USA single family homes are.
Scroll down the article a bit and you'll see an age-aligned comparison. The percentage of at-homers has only grown 7% since Boomers stole all the jobs and land.
The relative cost of property/rent to income makes this trend really simple to understand.
For example, There's some one to take care of the elder members, and someone to take care of the kids.
The American Way of moving out from your parents' home ASAP to be so-called "independent" at any and all costs is not the only (or even best) way.
I know my neighbours have sex and I'm OK with this, but that doesn't mean I want to lay in bed and listen to them have it.
it probably was before like that. Now days, young person starting on min wage not necessary can afford all life necessities.
It's very, very commonplace for LGBTQ children in America. Their Christian parents kick them to the curb as soon as they possibly can and disown them. There's constant postings on Reddit about it, from these poor kids who don't know where to turn for help.
I don't think reddit is a reliable source for pretty much anything, especially making country-wide generalizations
And especially once adult children have their own children, it seems unthinkable to have a baby and a recovering mother in the house without help from grandmother and aunts.
What Bible are you referring to? That is not in the Jewish/Christian Bible.
So I was told the same thing when I was young that when I turn 18 I would have to leave. It was stressful to be honest but overall I am not sure it is a bad thing. The old adage of a baby bird will never fly if it isn't kicked from the nest seems to best encapsulate this idea and how it was present and executed to me. While jarring and terrifying it is ultimately for their own benefit.
But I've literally never heard of kids being told they had to leave home at 18, unless it's the foster care system where kids "age out" (even then, laws have changed recently to extend this to 21).
As a parent, I cannot imagine telling my kids they have to leave, especially at a relatively very young age/maturity. Our kids leaving home comes up occasionally in conversations, most commonly perhaps with the typically exasperated parent retort of the genre of "well you can decide differently when you live on your own!" But even then, my kids have said things like "what if I don't want to live on my own?" And we always follow up with: "Then you can stay here as long as you want. This will always be your home."
I really don't feel like our attitude in this respect is different from most other parents we know. But of course families can be very different, and I'm now aware that your experience may be more common that I previously thought.
Thanks for sharing.
I stayed in my house one year after I turned 18, and it was a huge mistake, especially since I was commuting almost 2 hours a day to university, but also...well, rent wasn't that high back then...I found a room for $215/month near UW in 1994.
These days I don't think that value proposition exists anymore.
There is also the societal pressure to find a place of your own for privacy.
Also if you’re in university you might only have guaranteed room and board first year. I know I didn’t have a choice after my sophomore year. No matter how much I protested I was required to find off campus housing.
I moved out as soon as I could, and if I hadn’t I don’t think I would have had half the life experience. It’s just hard to do that without any privacy.
It’s not that my parents were tyrannical. It’s more like a chilling effect.
Is this an American thing, or a northern European thing?
China is listed at the #2 dynamic economy and it is common there.
Singapore is listed at #6 and it is common there. Singapore is also substantially richer than the US.
I can understand the appeal - no rentals to pay, way lower cost of living if the parents live in a non-metropolitan area, and - if you have kids - you have someone to take care of them during your meetings.
I don't think that is really true, at least for kids going to university. In fact, lots of kids virtually move out before they are even finished with high school because boarding schools are so much more common there. After they graduate from university, it is very very common for young adults to live in another city, visiting home maybe once or twice a year.
Americans really tend to look at a lot of things from other cultures that they haven't experienced personally with rose tinted glasses. That's because people rarely talk about what they implicitly consider normal. For most people in my culture (Russian) everyday verbal and psychological abuse was and still is just norm of family life, and physical abuse is probably too for almost the majority.
However these kids aren't living in their mom's basement because the culture has changed but because the economic and social outlook is collapsing.
Our society, that is our neighbors, our cousins, our brothers, our children are being strangled.
The headline advertised a colossal shift in "norm" over just ~15 years.
Except that it's silly bait. Millennials are ~15y older than Gen Z. Of course more Zoomers are at their parents' home, they're practically still kids.
This is accounted for further down the page at "what they did at 34/22". The increase is actually very slight. Far less than the headline suggests and immediately understandable based on the house price and rent trends as percentage of income.
The headline, and the title here are bait.
There, the part of this that makes the bare stats mean anything whatsoever.
Labor participation rate is another thing to track, more of GenZ is attending college rather than embracing independence and going to work than all other cohorts so its not surprising.
My mom is an immigrant, and she has always welcomed her adult children to live with her (even to the point of insistence). I fully expect to go live with her when she reaches her elderly years. I'm even kind of looking forward to it. I live across the country from my whole family and this has been a very isolating experience, even if it was my choice to do so.
I don't think it is weird for adults to live with their family. I actually think it's weirder and more unnatural NOT to live near or close to your family.
My sister lived with her kids and husband under the same roof with my mother and the situation was extremely complicated because my sister always were to be a guest in a way.
I guess my instinct is that all worthwhile pursuits require sacrifice and childrearing, being the most worthwhile pursuit, should reasonably take the most sacrifice. And I revel in the fact that, through decades of schooling and job experience and saving, I can keep my wife home with the kids and live in reasonable material comfort, just a little below the median income for equivalently sized households in my state.
I would suggest to anyone that growing up in an alcoholic family doesn't do anyone any favors. My parents so neglected their health that they both died before I turned 20, and before they reached 60. Unfortunately for me, neither had any savings, retirement, or life insurance.
So yes, that was meant in a sympathetic way. And my dad too died young, but not quite that young.
I did find them very neglectful. I had needs and they didn't do a great job in getting them met. This reinforces the idea that your needs aren't important, and you instead become a people pleaser later in life, in an attempt to "win" the love of others. That's very sick thinking.
I'm not for helicopter parents or anything, but there sure is a happy medium somewhere in there. I'm finding out now that I have very obvious learning and attention disabilities, and probably a touch of the 'tism. That should have been picked up relatively easy by the fact that I'm highly intelligent but had a complete lack of being able to do any homework, what-so-ever.
- Since baby boomers were born, the US has gotten a lot more diverse.
- This is meaningful, because in a lot of cultures, multigenerational homes are the norm. There is a lot less pressure to move out just because one is an adult, and there's more emphasis on the family unit.
- It doesn't seem like a coincidence that diverse places like LA and NYC are more multigenerational. Yes of course they're also a lot more expensive, and it's not just a cultural thing.
Also multi generation home might be a red herring. Because in just about every country adults are supposed to support themselves. Multigenerational means you support your parents not that they support you. So the type of multigenerational homes we see rising today might not be reflective of different cultural preferences explainable by rising diversity
China, India, and Latin America make up an extremely large portion the world's entire population, and families from there have had a growing presence in the US. Multigenerational housing is the norm there, and is absolutely not a red herring. Additionally, the focus is on supporting the family unit, not supporting in one specific direction.
I definitely agree that high prices (housing in particular) are contributing to this, but so is culture.
It's traditionally not made up of adult children who are unable to support themselves. Instead it's made up of adult children supporting parents in their old age.
That's not the same thing we're seeing in the US where lots of millenials are staying home due to being unable to support themselves
This does not necessarily mean the parents are supporting their adult children directly, it also means mutual support.
An example: Parents will argue "Why move out and pay a lot to a random landlord when you're welcome here and can save money?".
It is not a free ticket to freeload, the child is expected to contribute in some manner to household (Pay rent, split bills, help with chores etc.). Parents from these aforementioned backgrounds actually encourage children to stay as long as they want, or at least until marriage. It is not seen as shameful that they're past 18 and still at home.
I'm not arguing that economics don't play a factor, but I believe that's only part of the reason.
it is not clear there is severe shortage of housing in general, but there is another factor: houses were used as investment vehicle by rich people during 20 years of low interest rate, which drove price up significantly, and also decreased available(not total) inventory.
the problem is that investors want not one, but say 10.
> This requires building a lot more than there are today.
first link in google says there are 144M housing units in US. Is it not enough for 350M population?
Investors wouldn't want 10 if prices were stagnant because there was plenty of supply.
>first link in google says there are 144M housing units in US. Is it not enough for 350M population?
If housing isn't where people are, then no there isn't enough. About half the US population lives metropolitan areas.
yes, and prices were not stagnant because many rushed to buy with low interest risk free loans. And now they don't want to sell, because they can rent it for high.
> If housing isn't where people are, then no there isn't enough. About half the US population lives metropolitan areas.
even if 80% lives in metropolian areas, which I would totally believe, do you have any evidence that houses are not there too?
Were investors buying 10 cars at a time with low interest loans and regular people forced to buy/lease from them before the chip shortage? Why did cars only shoot up in price when it was difficult to obtain one?
Why does a country like Japan, with its declining population and plenty of housing not have a flood of investors buying tons of homes at once and flipping/renting them back to its population? Could it be because that would make a terrible investment?
That housing is an investment vehicle and not you know, just a home to live in, is the evidence. Homes aren't rising in prices where populations have declined and buyers aren't competing.
I wrote already: low interest risk free(because of foreclosure) loans. So this is risk free leveraged investment and even with tax benefits. I don't know anything else like that.
I answered this too already: inventory indeed is not high enough to satisfy all investors.
I did not read about that or search it though. But it is an interesting idea.
That's of course not to say that this is the only benefit from living with family (if true).
I think it is also economically makes sense because in many of these countries it is very hard for young people to find a housing where they live specially in the big cities where there is more opportunities.
Also because of the centralized economy around capital city and a few cities it will but pressure on the housing market. Not like the US when there is much more diverse and spread economy.
I really miss living close to my extended family and be like 1 hour from most of them. Where I never been alone in any circumstances. But here is the US, I feel lonely and I don't think I am the only one.
I was definitely more broke working as a pizza guy and then at a university, but I valued my freedom much more. Lived paycheck to paycheck with very finely tuned finances, no savings just student loan payments. I survived on a diet of library media, books, torrented video games and super cheap beer. The interesting part was I felt relatively happy. Threw crappy parties where we'd all chip in to buy a bunch of 40s, and someone would dj. I didn't really start to "have some money" until I was about 30~ from university job, and then I quit for industry where I 3x'd (I cried that day, as I made more money than anyone in my family!)
I think now it's much easier to feel aspirational about money and hard to be happy with you lot when you're getting firehosed about how everyone is having a better time than you are and they have more money. Things are also much more expensive, especially after the pandemic.
There is value in coming home to your own couch and knowing the space is yours, and yours alone. Maybe tastes have changed. I know that in my life, every time I tried to outsmart and skip a step I feel like life threw me a set back to learn the lesson I tried to not learn :D.
By his early 20s, and frankly sooner, a healthy human being wants to have his own life. He doesn't want to live on his parents' dime. Healthy parents also don't want their children in the nest anymore either, and it is their duty to, proverbially speaking, kick them out. What "leaving the nest" means in a given culture may vary (the article in question seems to be talking about the US), but in any healthy culture, there exists the same basic psychological emancipation from parental dependence, an emancipation willingly embraced or imposed by necessity. Loving parenting is a process of progressively removing training wheels and clipping tethers. The goal is to lead someone to becoming a man or a woman: in short, an adult. This means truthful and honest feedback instead of deceitful complements or excuses, upping the challenge, and being increasingly and accordingly demanding, so that by the time someone does leave the nest, the significance of the transition is largely in the symbolic act, not a change in responsibility they can't handle. Parents and adult children should be able to relate to one another as adults. If that's not happening, something is wrong.
In short, we have a problem with Peter Pan syndrome. An infantile, therapeutic culture of narcissistic self-indulgence makes this very easy. Mental illness is to be expected.
Nope. Things are just too expensive. Why move out a party extraordinary amount in rent when one can stay home, contribute to the bills for less, save up for a house and then move out? Make no mistake, there is such a think as unnecessary struggle.
No way. It's definitely the first.
When I was 22 years old in 2004, I was making $13/hour and the rent on my 1-bedroom apartment was $600/month. I have a friend that still works there, and he says the pay is now $21/hr, and the place I was renting is now $1,475/month. In 20 years, the pay is up only about 60%, but rents are up nearly 2.5x. He had to get a roommate to be able to afford rent.
It's ridiculous that a country as rich as the USA has had the standard of living DROPPING over time.
In the future, we expect to "live with our parents" again, but it will be because they will move in with us as they advance in years and need additional care. So, idk, the article seems to start with the assumption that living with family is undesirable and a result of financial stress. That's true for some, sure, but it can also just be the way people prefer to live.
If you know where I can find safe and dependable roommates, HMU.