More and more young adults refuse to leave the nest

WASHINGTON – Dec. 1, 2015 – Pundits predicted that young adults would become renters or owners post-recession, but the stay-at-home trend continues as an increasing percentage stay with Mom and Dad.

According to the latest U.S. Census data, more young adults now live with their parents than during the Great Recession. The share of 18-to-34-year-olds in this category was 31.5 percent at the end of the first quarter, up from 31.4 percent one year earlier.

A decade earlier, just 27 percent of young adults lived with their moms and/or dads. The fact that the share has barely moved since last year is especially notable because many economists expected young Americans to begin moving out as the economy perked up. In November, the Pew Research Center reported that more young women were living with their parents in 2014 than any time since the 1940s.
The housing sector pins its hopes on these new households driving future demand.
Economist Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley, does not expect the trend of young people continuing to live at home to significantly reverse course any time soon. He theorizes that the rise in adult children living with their parents is largely related to the fact that millennials are putting off marriage and parenthood.
Because young people aren't leaving home in large numbers even as their employment prospects improve, a surge of pent-up housing demand will likely be closer to a slow, steady trickle, Kolko concludes.
Source: Wall Street Journal (11/23/15) Kusisto, Laura
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