Paul TostoThe Great Recession changed a lot of things, including our basic notion of what’s supposed to happen when your kids graduate from high school.
We used to expect them to leave the house and be on their own after graduating high school.
But in 2010 more than one in 5 adults ages 25 to 34 lived in multi-generational households, mostly living with parents. In 1980 it was about 1 in 10 but the the percentage rose steadily in the 2000s and spiked in the Great Recession.
The data comes from Pew Research Center.
Equally interesting, Pew reports today that most of the young adults who’ve returned to live with their parents (or never left) are pretty satisfied with the situation. “If there’s supposed to be a stigma attached to living with mom and dad through one’s late twenties or early thirties,” the group notes, “today’s ‘boomerang generation’ didn’t get that memo.”
Some excerpts from the study:
48 percent of boomerang children report that they have paid rent to their parents and 89 percent say they have helped with household expenses.
Twenty-five percent say the living arrangement has been bad for their relationship with their parents.
78 percent say they don’t currently have enough money to lead the kind of life they want, compared to 55 percent of their same-aged peers who aren’t living with their parents.
Why is everyone OK with the arrangements? One reason, says Pew, is that moving back has become so common — 61 percent of adults ages 25 to 34 say they have friends or family who have moved back in with their parents over the past few years because of the economy.
By the way, MPR News has been on the “moving back home” story all through the recession.
— Paul Tosto