18 year olds and 29 year olds are worlds apart. Does anyone have these numbers broken down by smaller age groups?
Given that universities are largely online only and dorms are closed, it’s not surprising that large numbers of college age students would be moving home. Including them with people in their late 20s muddies the waters.
So, the increase was mostly driven by 18-24 year olds (both college-age as well as some new grads), who were already 2.4x more likely to live with their parents.
A ton of college age students literally can not go to college right now. Are they included in these stats, or are college age students listed as living at home by default? I cannot make it out from the link.
If so, this seems really obvious and that is was useless research.
The full news release from Pew [0] indicates that this is analysis of the monthly Current Population Survey [1] conducted by the Department of Labor.
"The analysis of recent trends and characteristics is based on the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
In particular, further in Pew's methodology section ("How we did this"), the authors note that the CPS counts all unmarried students in dorms as living with their parents. This is a pretty big caveat. However, this still indicates an shift of students living off-campus who moved back in with their parents.
Additionally:
"The Current Population Survey (CPS), also referred to as the household survey, is a monthly sample survey of 60,000 eligible households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The survey is conducted using a combination of live telephone and in-person interviews with household respondents."
So, the shift is driven by surveys, rather than generic assumptions.
That said, IMO, the value-add of this analysis is not the top-line number, but the relative shift (5% absolute increase _since February_).
The CPS response rate has plummeted from 90% to 50% since the pandemic. I wonder how the affects the comparability of data from different phases of the survey.
If we assume that they are counted as living at home it makes the statistics rather less meaningful as we are currently going through a situation that is temporarily causing them to live at home.
I suppose if you made a category 'temporarily living at home', then you would also be able to track after Corona how many students remained living at home (which might be an indicator of economic damage)
And I would argue the rest shouldn’t. Pandemic aside most universities are kicking people out for socializing too much. What value does that leave you paying for? In person lectures?
How many 18 year olds graduate from high school and immediately get jobs which allow them to move out on their own? Even though 30% of high school grads don’t go to college, I imagine very few of those move out of their parents house until at least a few years later.
That's new, though. It used to be that kids got out of high school and moved into their own houses right away. Only about half of the people from my high school class went to college. The other half went out and got jobs as oil field welders or whatever and had bought houses by the age of 20.
I think it's a real problem for our future that there are now lots of adults who have never lived to see a functioning housing market with plentiful supply. Everyone under 30 thinks its normal that you have to save your salary for 25 years to afford a down payment on a home. It isn't.
That functioning housing market might have been an anomaly, only lasting a generation or two. Through history it may have been much more common for most people to never be able to afford to own a home.
Anyway, growth is unsustainable: if housing keeps being a good investment for long enough, sooner or later it becomes unaffordable.
I agree it's a real problem, and we may have to get creative looking for solutions.
A possible direction would be smaller apartments in tall buildings. Quicker to build than a house and more affordable. You don’t have a lot of space in them, but when it’s located in a big city, you can spend the time outside enjoying hobbies and entertainments (the pandemic won’t last forever anyways).
Throughout history, hardly anyone owned the kind of home we got used to in the suburbs. Even when the world population was under 1 billion, most people were itinerant and got housing for being hired help, or were some kind of serfs with a tiny plot.
Communal housing was the norm in much of the world, including USSR, and it’s only recently that China built housing for everyone to move into the cities.
Doesn't change the fact that not being able to buy housing when young (whether detached homes or apartments) in the west is not a function of these countries becoming poorer but of low interest rates & municipal politics driving up housing prices.
At the end of the day, prices rise due to demand (and gentrification, or even more extreme, billionaires parking their $ in US real estate and not even living there).
There is lots of cheap housing in the USA, but no one wants to live there. Someone should start a tech hub in Detroit’s abandoned housing regions, it’s a bargain.
> Daniel Gilbert (born January 17, 1962) is an American billionaire businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the cofounder of Quicken Loans and founder of Rock Ventures.[3]
Downtown, but to a larger extend Midtown and Corktown changed a lot. People want to live there again.
The cost of housing is only closely coupled to the cost of land to the extent you haven’t the technology to fit more units on the same lot. The value of land should continue increasing indefinitely as it’s a function of local amenity. Who benefits from the value of land is a deep question.
I wouldn't have wanted to buy a house at 20 - the thought of getting tied down with property at such a young age seems rather alarming.
Now at 35 I can't imagine it more readily, even if not quite yet. But even at 30 I chose to go abroad and spend four years in a different country, and wouldn't want to miss that experience.
Ability to buy house at 20 as a norm is the historical/cultural outlier. And even at that period it was not something every socioeconomic group would be able to get nor something possible everywhere.
I have 5 18-29 year olds and cannot envision a scenario where anyone in my region could wholly support themselves, using nothing but their k-12 education (eg: no family connections).
Worse is that the above is largely true for most students wrapping up trade schools and 2-4yr degrees. I hope that people working on 8+ year degrees have the insider connections to help them find gainful work - but IDK how realistic that is.
This isn't some recent covid thing; this goes back to at least the 2008 crash.
Just to add another data point: I am currently working as a SWE at a large bay area software company and I recently moved home with my parents to a low COL area.
Not everybody is living with their parents due to economic hardship. I could pay rent pretty much anywhere but chose to move in with my parents because I saw an opportunity (from WFH) to spend time with them + my dad is sick. And it's also nice that I'll save about $20-30k a year in living expenses, live in a less dysfunctional region than the Bay Area (though with different problems for sure), and have way more living space. I am pretty happy to not be beholden to the racket that is renting in a hot metro area.
Yes, it's only possible because of Covid, but it's not forced or a negative like these articles can make it seem. Anecdotally I know many other bay area/large metro area software people who have done the same thing.
I happily lived with my parents while I worked a tech job from 18-21. I'm almost 40 now, own a house, and am married. I won't "live with" my parents by any real definition, but with more WFH flexibility, I will absolutely be making the 7 hour drive to spend a week with them more often than I was able to before.
My parents are awesome! And you only have so much time with them in this world -- they're in their 70s and 80s and I'm happy to have the flexibility to spend more time with them. I do make sure to get a covid test each time I visit, though. (currently visiting an aunt and uncle out-of-state, after a covid test and a 16 hour drive).
No problem until kids get married. Till then whats wrong with them staying with the family?
They can pay rent (less than the market rate) to parents and manage expenses on their own. Its a total win-win situation. Stop shaming kids or parents who do that.
Speaking purely for myself, I wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible - didn't know why. Looking back, my family was totally dysfunctional and toxic. Being in an atmosphere where I couldn't have left (due to things like the economy or whatever) would have been akin to being in an abuse romantic relationship, while living with my partner. But they don't make "safe houses" for 19 year olds trying to escape their parents. You're just homeless.
Looking back, I should have ran away at ~16, things would have been much better.
I can't speak to your particular situation but I can say that at least in the USA it's a cultural thing to leave your parents. In many Asian cultures (and I'm sure plenty of others) there is no stigma of living with your family and no cultural push to stop.
I'm on several Japanese dating sites. It's not uncommon to see people in their 40s and even 50s living at home. I have a friend in her mid 40s still living at home. It's common to see mom's (50s-60s) and daughters (20s-30s-40s) going out together. One of my closest friend's from Malaysia in is 40s, his older brother lives at home with parents, his wife, and their 10yr old son. It's normal.
I know in the USA the culture tells you "GET OUT!!! YOUR PARENTS SUCK!!! FREEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM!" and I'm sure I could name 100+ cultural references but that's hardly the norm for the world. And I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous of people who have no issues spending lots of time with their parents. I love mine dearly but it would be hard to live with them for some reason.
In Japan, living with parents is usual (and me!) but people laughing that is exists and a meme "a man in child room" was getting popular in 2019. IMO it helps real estate industry.
I suspect that 40s/50s in dating sites is biased datapoint.
I’ve always told people if they like their parents enough and the circumstances are positive, living with your parents longer can be a great option.
I moved out of my parents’ home when I was 16 and never looked back. My 16 year old isn’t likely to be leaving anytime soon. He spends his evenings with his family and drives a good bit of the dynamics (game nights, weekend agendas, etc). He simply likes it at home. I’m vigilant about the time at which he’s probably going to need to separate in ways he hasn’t signaled yet, but for now, we’re all happy to be together.
But he’s not 18 and in the job market and making an economic selection. But when the world is as crazy as it is now, maybe those who like their parents enough to return home are harbingers of something could that can come out of this — stronger familial connections. Certainly, my generation doesn’t seem to have it going backwards...
You hit the nail on the head. While others see their families as a support system, mine has always acted as the opposite. Similar to you, I wish I had gotten out earlier. I feel for all the folks who are forced to stay in abusive "support" systems just to survive.
Oh man. I get where you’re coming from. Glad it worked out for you.
My brother who now has kids lives with my parents. He works with my dad and they get along well. He’s now had like 2 rental properties on the side and probably has at-least 3X higher net worth than me.
So while I enjoy the freedom of being in another country alone, I sometimes do ponder how life would have been if I stayed with/near them. Our kids would have enjoyed spending time with grandparents for sure. My wife could use that help. Right now she is stay-at-home mom. If we had grandparents close by, she could work. Day care is just too far expensive to be worth it.
Staying with parents has a lot of benefits (esp with covid WFH thing) if you have good relationship with them.
>> "safe houses" for 19 year olds trying to escape their parents
Those were called "squats" when I was young, that's where I ended up at 19. Although I wasn't trying to escape my parents at that point, I was planning on leeching off of them. I ran away for the first time when I was 14, by the time I was 19 free food and rent in the suburbs sounded pretty nice. My parents weren't having it.
I can't speak to everyone, but a lot of young people need to leave their parents' house because it's in a region without a lot of good employment. Some people grow up in rural or rustbelt areas.
For example: my parents don't live on a farm, but their house is between a corn field and a forest. The only work in the vicinity is farm labor, local gov, or retail/service. I guess a remote job could be an option, but their only internet option is slow unreliable DSL (cuts out every 20-30 minutes, phone company unable to diagnose the issue).
The nearest city is about a half hour away. It's relatively small, but does have some opportunities. No tech scene though, of course. There are a couple of small factories remaining, some banking/insurance business, hospitals and medical, and more retail/service.
My dad was an electrical engineer, and he had to commute 1+ hours each way to get to his office. Even if I was willing to commute that far, that wouldn't be an option since that company left long ago.
My parents do have an absolutely gorgeous view of a scenic rural valley outside their front windows though, and 100s of acres of forest behind them.
Depends. My wife moved in with my elderly (I was born late), widowed parent and I right after our wedding because there was no way I could leave them to fend for themselves after everything they'd done for me. My in-laws even encouraged it. It definitely wasn't the most romantic proposition but it hasn't stopped me from putting a ring on it.
It's a different culture though. I've definitely read Indian guys complaining how awkward it is to date / experience relationships with families being present all the time. Then there's a significant number of families who will be actively involved in choosing a life partner. And lots of other things... It's hard to compare metrics like young adults living at home without accounting for all of it.
Cultural norms really matter here. If living with your parents is normal, it won’t be a barrier to marriage. If living with your parents is seen as a sign of financial hardship or failure, it will become a barrier to marriage.
I am not sure it’s right to say that one way or another is dysfunctional. Each family is unique, people have different goals and preferences. There is no approach that would be right for everyone. But if the reasons for staying are mostly economical, it tells us that people are most likely doing this not because they enjoy it.
I'm sure the current approach in the US is dysfunctional.
No one is saying people can't move out. All we're saying is that in most countries in the world, there is no stigma to not moving out. Some kids move out when they head out for college. Others move out when they get married and set up families. Others move stay together, and the grandparents help raise the kids.
All of these should be okay.
In the US, they're not. The reasons people are staying are economical, but the reasons most people want to move out are equally broken: image and social pressure. People living with parents in the US are perceived as losers.
COVID19 exasperates this problem. Since the only people moving back in with parents are doing so due to economic reasons, the messaging that sends becomes stronger. I don't mind more than half of 18-29 year olds living with parents. That's only occasionally a problem. I do mind more than half of 18-29 years old living with the ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL STIGMA of moving back in with parents. That's where the majority of the harm comes from.
(No, I'm not arguing there aren't abusive / dysfunctional / etc. families. It's a common. It's just not the majority case.)
Americans already make poor marriage decisions. Marrying people we have only interacted with under parental supervision would make that much, much worse.
Statistics prove you wrong! In countries where parents are involved in matchmaking (in other words, there is some outside, semi-objective force at work beyond hormones), marriages tend to be healthier and more stable.
"Involved" isn't the same as "coerced," US stereotypes to the contrary.
I expect this has more to do with expectations about compatibility and the strength of the relationship, rather than actually stronger relationships. It would be interesting to see data on subjective satisfaction, behavior, etc. that would separate out couples who are staying married out of duty vs. couples who actually like each other.
Analyses I've seen say this has a lot to do with expectations, but in a rather different way than you described.
To get things out-of-the-way: All the data I've seen suggests that couples in such countries DO actually appear to have stronger relationships and people in relationships DO appear to like each other more (at least a few years in).
General analysis:
US: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of a Disney-style romance, with a soulmate, prince charming, and all that. Sometimes, that's even there up-front, but people change, and 10 or 20 years down the line, "soulmates" will usually be less compatible. At that point, people are hit with disappointment, conflict, and quite often, divorce. The expectation of potential divorce also gives less incentive to invest into the relationship too. That's especially true in times of crisis. If you're hit by a car, does your mate stick with you or move on? People need to hedge.
PI: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of initially being different, but of needing to the work to make it work, since they're in it for life. They're not disappointed when reality doesn't look like Disney, and usually they work together to make things work out. Couples tend to grow together over time, rather than grow apart, which is a healthier dynamic. In crisis situations, couples can count on each other to have their backs, since if things go badly for your partner, they go badly for you and vice-versa. Plus, you'll be counting on them in 50 years, so if you're not there for them now...
Refs: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari.
But there is a more general aspect that parents can objectively evaluate compatibility and quality of your partner in a way that you can't. Again, it's worth noting there's a scale here. Do you inform your parents? Get advice? Ask permission? They pick, with your permission? With your advice? Entirely arranged? It's a spectrum.
Please tell me if this is normal, but the one single Indian guy that I was friends with stayed with his parents and grandparents. He was in his 30s, a virgin, never dated because his family didn’t believe in frivolous dating and when he decided to get married, he went back to India, had eligible women submit from what he explained were “applications”, chose a few that he thought were appealing, went on chaperoned dates to get to know them and about six months later got married.
That is not at all how things work in western cultures.
That’s not meant to be a judgement, we all met for dinner a few years later, they have kids - four generations staying together, they seem happy and every time he talks about her, his eyes still light up in a way that you can’t fake.
I'm born in the west to Indian parents and you're right this is common among Indians but I also went this route and met my spouse this way and we are really happy that we have a multigenerational household. It's especially helpful for working women like my wife because my parents are happy to watch kids if needed and we also can learn from them how to take care of kids, and they are happy to have family around, unlike so many their age.
It's a win win win and anytime this is brought up the first thing people say is "Well I could never live with my parents! I had to get out of there" but honestly there's a lot worth tolerating when you're younger if it means that when you're older you have four more helping hands when you are in your early 20s, starting your careers, and having children.
My grandparents also looked after me when I was young, my granddad picked me up from daycare etc. But, they stayed in their own home.
Don’t get me wrong, if my parents weren’t able to take care of themselves, they would definitely move in with me. My parents are both in their late 70s, and independent, but I don’t see my dad living by himself with his hearing and eyesight going if something happened to my mom.
Different houses nearby is the ideal scenario in my opinion for parent / child couples. Houses are generally not sound proof enough for me to want live in the same one.
As a somewhat well established forty year old, I would send money to my parents and help them pay their bills if needed to maintain their sense of independence if it were merely a financial situation for them before I would move them in with me.
You make it sound like they had to fill out a form. There was such practice in ancient history where the monarchs would have “swayamvar” and eligible groom candidates would have to go through tests.
In the contemporary world, it’s no different than Tinder/OkC, just the CSS(HTML) is different but the dynamics are the same.
With Tinder or OkCupid, if I asked about how they felt about marriage and kids on the first date, I would be ghosted so fast it would make my head spin.
He went to India for two weeks and came back talking about marriage. He had never met or spoken to his now wife beforehand.
The problem with allowing children at home forever is a lack of forced maturity. Why bother figuring out life as an adult when instead you can continue to live carefree as a child? That is problematic in that it continues to reinforce entitlements and expectations that are associated with dependence and risk aversion without consideration for the costs and consequences therein.
As somebody with a high school senior I am ready for my kid to enter the world. It’s not that I want to get rid of her but instead as a responsible parent I want to push in the controlled direction of accepting greater independence and responsibility. In putting that stress upon my child, which was a normal expectation 20 years ago, I am helping my child develop continued maturity well beyond her peers.
I agree. At 18 I have left for Uni, living in a dorm. That was the first step of forced maturity. Had to do my own laundry, get food, take the bus etc. At 20 I've rented an apartment, the second step of forced maturity. That means all the house work of cleaning, cooking, paying rent, shopping for everything. Sure you could do some at home with your parents, though it is less likely you'll have to do all of it, as you have this net that will catch you. Looking forward to the next step, of owning my own place and being tied down to a loan :).
I don’t see kids moving out at 18 and live in dorms become mature. Family is the first classroom for real life. Perhaps there was a time when leaving home meant getting real life experiences, but in this day and age...from school to college to work, everyone is infantalised. Take for example, FAANG employees who expect to be fed, clothed and expect to be ‘taken care’ of...this generation is a complete failure. We are seeing it plainly during this covid crisis. Absolutely helpless and have burnt bridges with family and community in favour of cubicles. I am disappointed. All my tax dollars and hopes wasted on an infant generation.
I've heard American universities do a lot more hand holding than their European counterparts (not sure how this manifests). When I went to uni (and left home) it definitely helped me mature - I had to worry about cleaning, buying groceries, feeding myself, doing laundry, etc.
I also had the freedom of nobody knowing or caring where I went and how late I came home (=greater responsibility for planning my time).
But I understand what you mean - i had a childhood friend who went to a 2 years vocational school after highschool (during which he lived at home) and then enlisted in the army for 4-5 years (in a non-combat technical role). I suspect the army basically takes care of you when you live on base because afterwards he moved back home & I got the feeling he pretty much stayed stuck in a child role for years later (may be complicated by mental health issues).
I think never having had to really be completely responsible for himself held him back.
Military breaks one down and the. rebuilds the person acc to specs. Very few people have a self determined life after military service. It is sad.
Many in industry and service sector who are ‘company men’ and never quit their first job until retirement also face the same problem. Double edged sword.
Someone who has married or has lived with or has employed or is an employee of someone who was in the military etc. AND who hasn’t been in the military themselves.
in other words, the objectivity has to come from someone who has been on the receiving end without having been part of the system.
For example: If I am Indian and I have an accent. Whether it’s understandable to Americans should be deemed by Americans. Not Indians.
Are you arguing that being in the military not only robs one of the ability to live a "self-directed life", but also the ability to even recognize what that is?
this generation is a complete failure. We are seeing it plainly during this covid crisis. Absolutely helpless and have burnt bridges with family and community in favour of cubicles. I am disappointed. All my tax dollars and hopes wasted on an infant generation.
This really sounds more like a personal problem that you're projecting onto tens of millions of people. Perhaps "this generation" (whatever that means) has burnt bridges with their family because they offer nothing but baseless, judgmental platitudes about the demise of the youth?
Relax, friend. There is nothing new under the sun. The current generation isn't better or worse than those that came before. The world changes here and there, but most things stay the same. Don't fret so much about the future of civilization. Be present and let the rest unfold as it will.
> The problem with allowing children at home forever is a lack of forced maturity.
I suppose here there is a distinction to be made between "never left" and "came back."
Though I guess often the "came back" turns more into "my parents live with us."
I don't think there's anything wrong with kids and parents living together long term, but I agree that there needs to be the forced maturation of having to deal with your own problems at some point in between.
Agreed those are entirely different. Living on your own for a few years, then staying with parents because it makes sense (parents need help, your financials need help, Covid) can be a smart move.
It's the kids who are 25 and don't know how to open a bank account that are the worry.
I never understood that: even if he doesn't know how to open a bank account, do laundry, or fix something, can't he just look up how to do so? I would expect the younger generations to be more facile with such things. Not being taught how is no travesty, one can simply teach himself.
As a child grows up they should be doing more and more things around the house? It's fair require your older and adult children to contribute to the upkeep of the house and in the case of a working adult, buy food, make dinner once in a while, contribute to rent/house payment, etc.
Indeed. It when you see 30 year olds tweeting "adulting is hard" when you see the impact.
A good analogy might be a programmer. It's a night and day difference between being on a team where someone else does the hard stuff and just pushes dumb tasks your way, versus striking out on your own and having to figure everything out.
Has it occurred to you that that feeling has probably been universal for a very long time, and we just didn't have twitter and an pseudoanonymous place to express it?
That's only a problem if their parents let them continue to live carefree as a child into adulthood, which they shouldn't do unless there are serious mitigating circumstances
>The problem with allowing children at home forever is a lack of forced maturity. Why bother figuring out life as an adult when instead you can continue to live carefree as a child?
Hey, you can figure out life as an adult even while living with your parents. Of course this does not mean spending your day in front of a PlayStation. Living with your parents in your 20's is a great money saver, and it's actually the norm outside the english speaking world. The only downside are decreased sexual opportunities, if you are in that sort of thing.
“Norm outside the English speaking world”? Where the hell to you have that from? Look up statistics on this. Highest percentage of people living away from parents is in fact not in countries where English is the first language.
I live in one of them. English is my third language.
People do leave home when they marry. In general, where I live, people leave home when they have to. People leave home if they can't find a job nearby, to study and to marry. Very few exceptions.
I moved out the week after I graduated from college because I had a job in another city. I don’t think I would have moved out if I had stayed at home. I was just coming off foot surgery, could barely walk, didn’t have a girlfriend so no reason for privacy.
But, how do you have a social life - let’s be honest a sex life - if you live with your parents and they do to? For most young men living in the west in normal times don’t women frown on men who still live with their parents?
My wife, son and I moved in with my parents to save money one summer when we were between homes - lease was up and our house was being built. I could work remotely and my wife worked for the school system. It was really awkward in our forties even though we all tried to make the best of it.
We both love our parents but we also like our privacy. When we do have your standard couple disagreements, the last thing we want is our parents being involved.
Staying in the family like that is also not very uncommon outside the US. And only in the last century in the US did single-generation households become the norm. Even when you are married mom and dad are useful as free childcare help.
On the contrary, moving out to establish a nuclear household is the common pattern west of the Hajnal line[0], along with later marriage, and the lower fertility which goes with it.
This has been true for at least a thousand years. America was largely settled by people from this folkway.
The influence that this pattern, and the bans on cousin marriage (out to fifth cousins in some cases, but second cousin marriage was commonly forbidden), has had on what we sometimes call WEIRD people, is interesting, if a bit off topic.
That link says nothing about multigenerational households.
At least in the early 20th century, multigenerational Irish, German and Italian immigrant households in New York were all fairly common, so I find it hard to square with what you're saying.
I followed one of the links to this very closely related article that does go into some more detail, though the actual link to marriage age is somewhat glossed over.
That is a very curious proposition, even though it only focuses on marriage age. I imagine it may have been true at some point (1965 when Hajnal looked at it), but countries of the former Yugoslavia have been having a net decline in the population since at least the 80s. I rarely meet anyone from those years (I was born in 1983) who has more than one sibling in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia or Bosnia (haven't met many people from Slovenia, but they are probably even worse off). And many of my primary/high school friends are an only child too.
I attribute that to widely available "free" University education (women were equally represented in student populations, if not at 50%, at 45% for sure, though "citation missing") soon after the World War 2, housing availability, etc.
Knowing some internal details like the fact that Kosovo probably had highest fertility in Serbia until it split off, the situation in 70s probably mirrored the one from countries West of the line.
The pattern Hajnal notices more likely corresponds to migration into cities (move from agriculture to industrialization and now services) and wider availability of education and employment to everyone, but in particular women (which happened in Communist Yugoslavia) and rising standards of living, rather than historical cultural traits as he claims in his paper (though I found only an abstract).
With more effort and closer look, I am sure that all of this could have been disputed even in 60s when the paper was published.
And interestingly, more recent data suggests that West of the line now has a higher fertility than the East in Europe.
It’s not really a problem after kids get married either. Standard practice in India. My wife and I (in our 30s) don’t exactly live with my parents, but they’re 10 minutes away and we might not come home for days at a time. I think it’s fairly common even among Americans. My wife’s family in Oregon has more than one recently married couple living with one of their parents.
One upside of the multigenerational household is that the oldest generation can take care of the youngest and vice versa. In the American single-generational model you have to spend out the wazoo for childcare and retirement home.
If you get along (which most people do) it’s great. My mom is retired, and my dad works from home. After my son started getting regular ear infections at daycare, my mom demanded to take him out of daycare. The ear infections stopped, he’s happy, my parents are happy, and we save a bunch of money.
Maybe family compounds will make a comeback. 2-3 acres with multiple family homes with a mixture of homesteading and multi generational community of friends and family. Right away, the baby sitting and day care expenses and anxieties will come down. Further post covid, perhaps home schooling micro schools in multigenerational compounds will become a thing. I hope it happens.
It's not quite shaming. You can compare the number of people living with parents over time to get some reasonable narrative for why that is... But the interesting metric would be "how many people live with parents only because they can't afford to leave".
I would encourage looking into the term "arrested development" to get some perspective on what Americans feel about living with your parents. We are strong believers in independence and learning who you are through your own path. That's why we take such great pride in our diversity of culture and personalities.
Living at home stunts that development and everyone else is worse off because we don't get the benefits of what unique things that person(not their parents) could have contributed to the greater society.
It's true. It's an American thing. That cultural expectation has in no way adapted to the economic realities of the present generation though, and I expect it to pretty much die out within 1 to 2 generations. Families are going to have to start sticking together to survive.
My dad paid rent in Pasadena, put himself through a Cal State, and put a roof over my mother and sister's head by working at a gas station. He will be the first to tell you that simply isn't economically possible anymore.
> My dad paid rent in Pasadena, put himself through a Cal State, and put a roof over my mother and sister's head by working at a gas station. He will be the first to tell you that simply isn't economically possible anymore.
I certainly was never able to do that either. I just moved out and rented a room in an area I could afford and worked from there. Just because your Dad had it really easy doesn't mean its become crazy difficult.
It does come across like you have a very high expectations about life because you happened to have very privileged parents. Most people in the US never had the advantages your father had and we get by just fine. Maybe we'll never be millionaires, but I think we'll both be okay.
Most people in the US did have those advantages. That's kind of my point. The guy pumping gas for minimum wage used to be able to do all of that.
I don't know what your personal life situation is at the moment, and I do apologize if you are on hard times. I know it's rough out there. I'm inferring from your comment that you are in the United States. Do you really think a shot at a rented roof over one's head, a college education from a state school, and a kid is asking for the moon?
A lot of young adults have abusive parents. The problem isn’t about shame but working full time without being able to afford a place of their own. USA has fallen so greatly in regard to the wellbeing of youth. I guess if people think that’s fine they should know it’s not that way in other first world countries. Young adults can even pay for university without taking on huge debt.
As a recent college student, I can personally contradict your claim that we can't pay for it without massive debt. I'm at a state school, worked during high school to save money (two jobs this past summer), and won a lot of merit scholarships that cover all of tuition and a chunk of room and board. The rest is covered by the 529 my parents set up: small, but there's very little left to spend.
If there was 1 merit scholarship in all the world and you recieved it while 20 million college students were in debt would you be writing "I can personally contradict your claim" since debt doesn't effect you personally? You see the problem with your logic, no?
You're right, there probably aren't enough merit scholarships for everyone. But, state schools are still pretty reasonably priced. Furthermore, any student could have done the work to earn those, but didn't. So maybe you can see why my sympathy is limited. I spent my high school years working to save for college and to excel in my academics while others played video games and partied. The fact that there aren't enough merit scholarships for everyone doesn't change the fact that any one of them could have made choices that would have earned them scholarships, and didn't.
You obviously had better parents than most with the last sentence. Individuals with abusive parents don't have that outcome. You might want to educate yourself on how environment shapes one's character as well as genetics.
There's nothing wrong with it, but there's a lot of reasons the child wouldn't want that, and I think that's the reason it's used as a metric of an unhealthy economy is because it indicates they have no other choice. EG: Want to have friends over but not have your parents involved? Can't do that if you don't have your own place.
Other commenters here seem to say that the culture, if not the modern phenomenon, of children moving out of their parents' homes early is more characteristic of the West (U.S., Western Europe), and not so much places like China, Japan, India (continuation of tradition, less modern stigmatization). This aligns with my experience and what little I learned in school as well. (Yes, N = 1.)
It so happens that this pattern is economically inefficient, and only in our inability to support it does its discontinuation serve as a negative economic indicator. American culture makes it an effective metric in the U.S. Where it's already common for children to live with their parents longer though, such as in India, the original choice could very likely be to stay, which makes the metric less useful.
In other countries and cultures, living with parents is entirely normal. My girlfriend is from India, and was very confused as to the whole "looking down upon people who don't move out" stance people take here. I explained a bit about how its seen due to our views (be they correct or not) of self-reliance, and other issues such as if they're just mooching off their parents, but I agree its still not as bad as people make it out to be.
Exactly. Everyone benefits. You can save a lot this way, too!
Of course there can be complications, like the money you put in for the rent may be spent on some utterly stupid crap. That is what my dad does. He should save, god damn it!
> Till then whats wrong with them staying with the family?
Leaving the family is good for many reasons. It teaches you to be independent, to live on your own, to handle your responsibilities, manage your earnings, i.e. to become an actual adult instead of relying on your family to cook, wash and do all/most of the chores for you. You can't get ready for a family and provide for them if you can't do these kind of things on your own in the first place. It's all about building experience and self-reliance.
Of course every family is different, but in society at large having kids staying longer with their parents definitely delay actual adulthood.
Why do you expect familly living with you to do all household work for you? Or that college dorm is first time students are figuring laundry? Seriously, one special assumption Americans do is that mom does all the housework and teenage kids do none of that.
The other absurd expectation is that laundry and cooking requires some special figuring out. Like, this all primary sounds like an issue of you all parent 7-16 years old more then anything else.
This seems to be an assumption common amongst newer generations. I was expected to my own laundry, mostly feed myself, get myself places, manage my schedule, do a good chunk of the housework, etc. It made sure I didn't fall flat on my behind when I hit the real world, and plus, I don't see why a parent should have to do those things when a child is physically capable of doing so.
My best friend lived with her parents until she got married. She went to a no-name college and became a teacher. I, along with my parents, spent 5 figures on a prestigious university and PhD, and I now work in Silicon Valley. With the money she saved on room and board she was able to put down a large down payment on a 0.5-acre house with her husband in New England. Meanwhile I am paying 5% interest on a jumbo loan. Who is the dummy here?
I spoke to someone who started working in sheet piling when he was 16. This is in the Netherlands, so plenty of that to go around. He stayed with his parents and saved until he could buy a house out of pocket at 25. He was 30, said he was saving to retire at 35. It blew my ‘educated’ mind.
I'm not quite sure how you can save enough money in 9 years (including 2 when you need to go to high school) to save enough money to buy a house out of pocket, even when you assume you don't buy anything for those years.
Banks are not offering jumbo refinances. All the houses in my neighborhood are 1m+, and they’re all off the market now because its not possible to secure a jumbo loan at the moment. My be region-dependent, IDK.
My bank is offering us refinancing options, but we're currently at 3% so it's not actually worth it. Our credit is excellent, but our loan is over $750K, and we live in the Bay Area.
In my (American-Italian) family it's always been pretty normal for the boys & the girls to live at home until they got married (or moved away for work, etc.)
I lived at home until I got married at 27. Best decision I ever made.
Honest question, I moved out of town for work a week after I graduated. How does that work when you’re dating? No sleepovers, no privacy, having to come home at a respectful time, etc? But maybe my viewpoint is skewed by knowing how my conservative (not the modern version of conservative) parents are.
I'm not OP but I dated the daughter of very conservative parents for several years before finally marrying her. We each lived at home and in fact she moved into my home after marriage because I have an elderly (I was born late) widow as a parent and leaving them behind to rot from solitude was not an option.
I think I can summarize it as: it's never been ideal, but we always made it work, and I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world. if the worst problem I had to solve was not enough privacy with my gf/wife, then I was doing pretty good on a global scale.
> I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world.
I share the same attitude and it’s served me well - you never know when life will hand you a bad card. Our 19 month old son at the time (6 years ago) got sick - he developed type 1 diabetes. It wasn’t easy to accept but then you look at the kids with more serious conditions in the waiting room at the pediatric endocrinologist’s office and realize that type 1 diabetes is manageable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a disease that never takes a break. In 6 years we’ve probably left him in the care of someone else (my parents) maybe a handful of times because he can’t self manage yet. But we make the best of it. Yes it would be nice to be able to go on date nights once in a while, but the times we’ve tried usually ended in multiple phone calls or constant texting. In the end it just means we spend more time with our kids. Someday they’ll move out/away and we’ll have more time alone than we like.
My plan if I start dating while living with my parents (just moved back) is to go to hotels/airbnbs or camp out. I've also moved into the basement rather than a bedroom right by my parents' so if I get serious with someone I could probably just have them over. That of course requires having a large enough house for that to be feasible
I didn’t have a curfew, my parents just expected a call if I was spending the night elsewhere. Sleepovers were fine, sleeping in the same bed was not. It was never a big deal for me, I never knew any different. There were unplanned opportunities for private time (when no one was home, etc.)
Outside of the major cities, houses in New England aren't a great investment. In many states the population is shrinking and property taxes are increasing to compensate.
I would think you can pay that loan off in a couple years working in SV. But with all the talk of forgiveness maybe you should hold off a bit...
Of course, it must be said that one doesn't get a PhD because it's the financially smart choice.
The problem is the previous generation ruined the housing market by building rentals and McMansions. Typical sized families are most happy when they have 2400 - 2600 sq. feet of house, but most apartments on the market are less than 1,300 and most houses on the market are over 3,000.
Three bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room are perfectly achievable with less than 2400 sq ft. American homes are much larger than those in Europe and it's not as if Europeans are all living in filthy overcrowded slums.
Average home size and home size per person in a household is much larger in the US than in other countries: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house. Not saying we should all live in Hong Kong coffin homes but even with, say, Germany the discrepancy is quite noticeable.
Indeed, just purchased a house in the UK in a relatively cheap area (rural Scotland) and it works out to about 1300 sq ft of house, excluding garden. Given the current market a first time buyer would be expected to put in around $60K deposit as mortgages have dried up for higher LTVs.
In other words, an 18 year old would have to save $5K a year for 12 years simply to have the deposit.
The national average for house prices is not too different from this scenario.
Your article seems to indicate that new homes are so large that they're inflating the (new home only) average. However, that's easier to do during a long period of reduced new housing starts.[1]
What we have is a smaller number of super-homes, being built for a limited clientele. That doesn't translate into a larger home available to most Americans.
I believe what best reflects our actual choices is our actual choices - which is average home size.
There are other reasons that houses sizes are large for new homes. It costs a lot for a builder to get permits, buy the undeveloped land, etc. They want the most bang for their buck.
I live in the burbs of Atlanta. We purposefully got the smallest floor plan the builder had. We still ended up with 3100 square feet. At the time in 2016, the builder only required 5% down - $16,500. We even got some of that back at closing because an FHA loan was only 3.5%. We pay less than $2200/month all in.
I don’t think many people on the west coast realize how relatively affordable houses are in the burbs of most major non west coast cities.
In Atlanta, your average SaaS CRUD developer can easily afford that making low $100K which they can make with five or six years experience.
On the other hand your average couple making $60K each - two teachers could afford that.
I tend to agree, the cultural observations usually gloss over the more impactful economic and geopolitical trends. Human behavior seems to be a reflection of these larger forces.
Isn’t the main problem with the housing market that loans became so easy to obtain that prices increases 500% over 30 years?
My parents had a nice suburban house, that went from 300,000 Danish KR to a little over 3 million in the years they owned it. Which is about the maximum my generation can secure in loans on regular jobs. There is now way it’ll increase to 18million though.
Not sure about denmark, but California is not building enough homes which is why prices are so high. The few homes available are all going to the slivers of the economy that can afford to spend $700k on a rotting 800 sqft bungalow without a foundation ordered from the Sears catalog in 1946.
I have had this doubt for a very long time and I feel HN is the right place to possibly get some non-defensive / non-trolls response to it.
I am an Indian and here (I'd say most of Asia) we have a very strong culture of staying with parents, living together and everything. I mean unless absolutely required , kids do not live separately.
What are your views on it, as a westerner? Except the financial angle.
One thing I noticed when hanging around Indian friends in the past is that a lot of what they described as Indian culture has more to do with where a country is in terms of development. A lot of things they called “Indian“ is often just what it was in my country “Norway” during my grand parents generation or earlier.
Staying with parents would be common here too in earlier times. A lot of western individualism grew as society transformed economically and technologically.
As people got a lot fewer children, and children perhaps had to move further for work. Government had to start building out retirement homes as not all old people would have children who could take care of them.
With more prosperity people also often want more independence and over time welfare services get better built out to help both the young and old.
Over time your culture adapts to it. My mom would definitely not want to have me hanging around for long periods of time. But she likes that I bring the family over and stay in weekends and holidays.
I know from Indian friends that you seem way more comfortable about being around a lot of people. As a Norwegian I hate being around too much people for a long time. I need plenty of alone time to feel well.
But it can be too much. This COVID19 pandemic has been hard. I miss people from work. My family. Just walking in a crowded street.
> With more prosperity people also often want more independence and over time welfare services get better built out to help both the young and old.
Yes, people will almost always choose freedom if they can afford it (including parents who can take of themselves). Few would willingly choose to compromise unless they have to, which is shown in data. The super rich Indian kids I know live in flats in big cities by themselves.
Not all westerners kick their children out as soon as possible.
Southern Europeans (Spanish, Italian, Greeks) and East-Europeans are very family oriented, and living with parents is seen as normal, expected and beneficial.
Americans do a lot of maturing, gaining life experience, building interpersonal skills, etc. during our twenties. I can't see much of that happening for me in front of my parents. I have some idea of the person I would be if I had simply replaced high school with work as my daytime activity, and I don't like it.
I suspect that this process hsa a lot to do with society changing over time, and I don't think the overlap between traditional cultures and living at home is accidental. When parents maintain supervision and control over their children for their whole lives, rather than just the first 18 years, there is less room for the generation to drift into different norms.
At around 20-25 years old, I felt a strong need to be out making a life for myself. I moved around, met people, and started my career.
Now that I have kids I can certainly see the appeal of living with or close to parents.
I think having a clean break around 18 years old is a good idea for many people. See what it takes to be self-sufficient when you have lots of energy and no kids.
My family left India 5 generations ago, in the late 1800s. We also had the “advantage” of being “separated” so our “Indian” culture was maintained. Most of us who made it here and stayed were probably not from upper castes. But there always was a strong link and loyalty to the motherland at least until my grandfather’s generation. You can probably guess where I’m from.
The first thing our people lost here was the language. Amazingly, Tamillians speak English in the fast-merged way Tamil is spoken but they speak absolutely no Tamil. Same goes for north-Indian language speakers. Now even the accent is being lost as the most superior accent in this country is obviously the one maintained by the ruling class (white).
Then, clothing. Our traditional dress became considered inferior for everyday use and only gaudy dress for weddings and other functions remain.
Now, my grandmother who looked after her father in law and changed his diapers on his deathbed is completely abandoned. She is so distraught because the generation of my parents is the first to break a pact that I assume goes back millennia in Indian culture; that children will care directly for elders (no old age homes).
It’s interesting however that the social-religious aspects of Indian culture from the late 1800s have been quite meticulously maintained, although there is little impetus for philosophy.
It is, however, still uncommon for Indian unmarried children to live with anyone other than parents.
The first time I visited India I was completely abhorred, for many reasons. I was extremely sure that I am not an Indian. But after living there for many years I can say that most differences between the west and India in this regard comes from the importance in India of the group over the individual, a situation which (seems to me) to be reversed in the west. And there are deep cultural values which exist in me to this day which emanate from India and I have been lucky enough to realise.
I have acknowledged that a large part of my personal life will be reconciling these two men that meet within me, the westerner and the Indian...
> But after living there for many years I can say that most differences between the west and India in this regard comes from the importance in India of the group over the individual, a situation which (seems to me) to be reversed in the west.
This was due to economic circumstances. Given economic freedom by higher incomes, especially for women enabling them to be independent, makes all of those group over individual cultures change to individual over group.
I see this in kids of Indians that moved from India to the US/UK and the kids still in India. If you’re financially able to you, you live in your own home. Parents might be nearby, or maybe move in once they need help due to their medical issues.
As a westerner (U.S., Caucasian) I’d say it’s not culturally the same... you’re sort of expected to move out, maybe stay near your parents (same metro)... but no social pressure/shame if you move three time zones away either.
There’s more stigma for living with your parents than not. I guess if you own the house and your parents live with you, that’s fine. But if it’s their house, generally speaking after college “it’s time to leave the nest!“
The irrationality of it really comes off as some subtle cultural manipulation by real estate moguls to profiteer off renters. I get the pressure is historic to the homesteading and rapid settlement of the country over the last 300 years but nowadays someone's got monetary interests in keeping the fire stoked.
All I want to do is live with my parents in my hometown. That defines success for me. I worked from home for 3.5 years in a previous job and because of Covid I am getting to live with them again for last 6 months.
It could be a cultural thing but I don’t think anybody in the world can love me as much as they do (possibly my wife and my sisters). Of course we fight at times but that’s just like any other relationship.
I feel pity and anger when I hear of abusive parents here. If you didn’t want a kid you shouldn’t have had one.
Would be more interesting if they broke it down from 18-22 (college age) and 23-29 (working age). Not everyone goes to college but it seems like a lot of this could be explained by kids living at home when their schools shut down in-person classes. The way they present the data it is impossible to tell.
Brent Cohen, executive director of Generation Progress, a research and advocacy center for young people, believes working remotely was the main cause.
'For those who were working remotely, this was likely a short-term move so that they weren’t alone in their apartments when social distancing measures were put in place,' Cohen said.
'But, what was expected by many to last two to four weeks, has now extended for nearly six months.'
I have 5 18-29 year olds living with me. Here's what we've learned.
Few companies will talk to you without a job history. Of those, ~0 will hire you, if you lack average-to-above-average interview talent.
For the vast bulk of entry level jobs, hiring is done via web portal. Once you've applied, you've applied. Try again a year later and they'll tell you that you've already applied[1].
In most of the US, you can't reliably get to work without a vehicle. You can't afford a vehicle (+ $300/mo insurance) without saving up months worth of income.
If you have any physical limitation of any kind, just keep multipling the above difficulties, until you reach your actual reality.
If you have a family member with limitations (eg: mental illness), you probably ought to multiply as well.
[1] This held solid from well before 2010 until a few years ago. I've heard some portals now allow reapplying, eventually. I haven't confirmed that tho.
My wife and have two of our children in the early 30s living with us. We're still in the house they were raised in. It's really pretty nice. It's not like we have to "parent" them, and we all know each other about a well as possible.
We're still in the house they grew up in so it's really so familiar that it's not something my wife and I even think as being out of normal. It really doesn't make any sense for them to be paying rent and we've got a pretty sweet setup for hunkering down during this pandemic. We're surrounded by hard core "preppers" here.
But really, it was pretty easy to see this kind of thing coming. It's not like we're in a full blown disaster of epic movie proportions but I think it's fair to say that it's been a lot easier on rural areas and families like where we live than most cities.
We still can't know for sure but things might get tighter before they loosen up and that is when "family" becomes important. It nice to have a "family home" that we can all count on.
Until recently normal people in their 30s owned a housing unit and had a family of their own. That this seems difficult today says really bad things about our society and the public policy influencing society. I'd put housing policy at the top of the "bad public policy" list https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-fut... but there are other reasonable candidates as well.
I agree. From the 80s on the focus on housing has been on "McMansions" and we've ignored how that's really pretty wasteful and silly. We can do a lot better than that.
We've seen a surge in "tiny homes" being designed but still not built at a rate that's made a dent. And what we really need are smaller family homes that are efficient and comfortable.
There are a lot of "Pre-fab" homes here where we live. Those are pretty cost effective but they still don't have the appeal of craftsmen built home.
There are some really cool old homes built out of rock here (Ozark Giraffe House). Most are pretty small by today's standards but they're great starter homes for young couples.
When I got married (me 26, spouse 23) my in laws assumed we would move in with them and had been putting together plans to remodel the house to adapt it. Her brother lived there until he married at 30, his wife with her parents until same. This was Western Europe.
Many of my own relatives in India considered it sad that I had moved out before marriage and that We didn’t get a home in the same neighbourhood as my parents after marrying.
These kinds of arrangements would have driven me bananas (and would if me own kid had to do it) but it’s pretty common.
well, I'm 35, do own my own apartment and I'm living with my parents. I don't know if it's a south american thing but we're a very close with our families over here. specially in this pandemic time it felt very natural to me to be here with them. I do have a room seoarated from the main house, so its quite good
I’m ~40 and my wife and three kids are living with my parents. With the pandemic it was very isolated to be by ourselves and we could WFH anywhere so are moving between my parents and my in-laws every few months. Kids are getting lots of grandparent time and lots of unauthorized screen time.
In a time where more and more older people are feeling isolated, and kids are cut off as well that's wonderful to give them an opportunity to enjoy spending time with loved ones. Good for you guys.
There is a housing crisis. Birth rates will eventually go down. The real estate market is ready to be disruptet with new walkable cities. Based on modern human centered design on walkability, mixed use for businesses and housibg, bike friendly cities.
Birth rates will go up because they are inheritable and because exponential growth always wins. The USA will be Amish.
It's only a change in environment that can knock that down a bit, but exponential growth still wins. Birth control cut the birth rate for most people, but not for all. The resistant sub-populations are still on exponential growth even as the other sub-populations go through a population crash.
I couch surfed for a couple summers in college and my wife full on lived in a car for a while before we met. We never thought of moving back in with our parents as an option. heh as soon as my little sister moved out my parents moved into a very small house, there would have been no where to sleep anyway.
Serious question. Why does America have a fixation with moving out of your parents home? Why does this headline make it sound like some bad thing. Oh god!
This is, roughly, the modern version of the american dream...
Be born to a middle class family living in the suburbs of a major city. Go to k-8 and maybe learn a bit (it's mostly highly structured childcare with learning sprinkled on top). Go to high school, get good enough grades that you get into AP classes. Get enough AP credit that you enter the college of your choice with plenty of headroom for a 4-year degree. Then take 5 years to do a 4-year degree. Learn how to live alone and be responsible while at college. Graduate, get a nice entry-level job through connections you made at university making ~1.5x median household income for your city. Get married. Climb the corporate ladder and have kids. And so on.
Obviously this is extremely specific, assumes a lot of privilege, and so on. But this is the path that will have your snooty aunt having nothing bad to say about you at Thanksgiving.
The important think to note is that, basically after leaving high school, the above plan has you living outside your parents house (even if you're still not totally independent). Moving back home after college is a pretty big step down in freedom (don't have to sneak your dates out the back door before your parents wake up, among many many other things).
So, from two different sides: one, people used to dorm or college living won't want to downgrade back to being under their parents' thumb to any degree. And two, being back in your parents' house post-high-school indicates a lot of things to potential partners and maybe even employers (though obviously decent ones won't ask or care..... but lots of employers aren't decent).
It's totally just a cultural thing. I think it will probably shift fast here in the next 20 years though. There are a lot of people in the 23-29 age range who have found the american dream I described above to be a pretty shitty deal that isn't attainable for a large portion of the population.
That's the American dream? I always thought it was "start out with little, but end up with a solid middle class lifestyle."
That doesn't mean Ivy League school or owning a house in the Bay Area.
Plenty of people are living the American dream working jobs paying $75k, living in a house worth $200k, kids going to public school and two used cars in the driveway.
If it's anything like the UK it changed in the eighties. People stopped comparing themselves with their neighours and started looking at the lifestyles of people they see on TV. All of a sudden you need a Rolex or Gucci clothing or a Porsche or holidays in Italy. And because that stuff is in your face everyday it appears normal. Look at the housing of any sitcom character, do you think a bunch of flaky dropouts could afford the New York apartments you see in Friends?
If you can't afford that lifestyle then just borrow more, even students with no income can get credit. Can't get a loan? Then you must be some kind of degenerate who deserves their poverty.
It takes quite a bit of fortitude to ignore all that and be satisfied with the ordinary. You can see by the state of most peoples finances that the majority haven't got that.
> It takes quite a bit of fortitude to ignore all that and be satisfied with the ordinary.
It takes quite a bit of income to feel secure enough in the face of increased volatility in the labor markets and increase in prices of healthcare/education/real state in growing economic areas/taxes.
The years of 50 to 65 are especially dangerous for Americans as they are much likelier to have a medical emergency, much likelier to not have a job providing decent health insurance (or much likelier to lose it), and they have some savings with which will cause them to not quality for government aid, but will get wiped out if they have a health emergency.
65 is when they get to the finish line and get taxpayer funded emergency hospital healthcare (the most expensive, debilitating cost for Americans). I expect the age to move up from 65 to 70 as I get older, just like Social Security retirement income age moves up.
The second biggest risk for many Americans is if they have complications during birth which cause one or both spouses to lose their ability to go to work, since 40+ states have no parental leave laws. A woman can go on bed rest two months before giving birth, and be fired if she can’t be back to work within 1 month after giving birth since federal law only provides for 90 days of total leave.
I wasn't thinking ivy league or bay area while writing this, actually. I was thinking cities like Kansas City or Austin or Cincinnati. Family-sized housing in those cities is definitely a lot more affordable than the bay area but you still need a 4-year degree (and probably two - via your spouse) to comfortably afford one.
Median household income in the Midwest states is 40-60k. A 4-year (in-demand... engineering etc) degree gets you 60-80k starting. Save up for 2 < x < ? years to get a 3/4-bed house 30 mins from your job near good schools.
Tbh housing in the midwest is still not super cheap if you want to be within 45 mins of jobs/stuff. You really have to put yourself out of commuting distance to get to property that's really superciliously cheap.
Completely honest, naive question. How do you have any type of real sex life living at home and single? I moved out as soon as I graduated college because I had a job four hours away.
Does that imply couples are only having a sex a few times a year on special occasions? In American culture that's more of a hallmark of "well into marriage" - young couples are going at it all the time.
The implication was that if you have a decent job and live at home you will generally be able to arrange something because of your access to cash. So you can bankroll whatever solution will work with your s/o or casual encounter.
If you're broke and living at home, it may be more difficult to enter a relationship or have a more casual encounter to begin with, let alone pay for a bunch of hotel rooms or whatever.
So the first person can go at it all the time like you said, but the second person is more limited.
> The implication was that if you have a decent job and live at home you will generally be able to arrange something because of your access to cash. So you can bankroll whatever solution will work with your s/o or casual encounter.
I think this answer still implies you're having sex maybe once or twice a month. Hotels aren't cheap and if you're paying for them more than a few times a month, why even live at home?
For many American couples - having sex anywhere from once a week to multiple times a day are all fairly common.
This is an interesting question. What is the point at which it's cheaper to get horizontal in hotels (and save money by living with parents) versus renting an apartment? Let's do some back-of-the-envelope.
From this Huffpo article they're throwing out $1,234.43 as the median rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in a selection of American cities (kid gloves to begin with - let's tackle SF rent later).
So what are hotel rooms going to run you? I just grabbed something off of Expedia in SF for Wednesday night. Hotel Abri in Union Square $106. Seems not too sketchy, and not too pricey. If your s/o is a little adventurous there's always $60/night Motel 6 (bedbugs notwithstanding).
So, say you're having sex two nights per week (sure, not all the time, but you're living with your parents so you're going to have to dial that libido back a little bit - listening to them bug you about grandkids should do the trick).
Let's estimate that with tax and everything you're blowing $250/week on hotel rooms. That's $1,000/month.
Honestly you're right on that one. Cheaper to just get an apartment.
But wait! What if you're in SF? Median rent even with the 'rona is $3,280. $3,280/$110 ~ 30x/month.
So, that's motel sex like 30 times per month. If you're under that, it's just money in the bank. So, maybe you and your s/o could think of it as every time you don't have sex you're putting money away for a down payment? I'm sure that won't have any weird long-term repercussions for your relationship.
That's one-sided savings. Say your s/o is pooling cash as well with a similar fixed cost structure. Multiply savings by two.
You're only looking at very cheap places though and I'd argue it's not going to be a very exciting lifestyle. Those rates seem a bit low - to me. I'm used to places charging $200+/night in the bay area. I'd hate to have to go through a check-in process and what not just to sleep with someone! I'd not bother. You're also not accounting for the fact that the children are "renting" a room from their parents - not an apartment. So, you need to look up the median cost of a room in SF. It's closer to $1200-2000/month. Back in the not worth living with your parents money.
I think people who live with their parents probably just aren't having much sex unless their respective partners don't live with their parents. And - honestly - that's about what I've heard from people I know who live with their parents. They might get laid but it's not happening at their parent's place much at all.
Btw, there is no cost saving in this equation - the children are merely taking advantage of their parent's wealth. Seems the privileged and celibate will reap some weird financial rewards at some point... at the cost of not getting laid and having a limited set of partners.
A 16 year old girl doesn’t expect her teenage boyfriend to have his own place. She is find sneaking in his house when his parents aren’t home. A 25 year old professional? I would think she wouldn’t feel the same.
The government printed massive amounts of money over the last 15 years, which inflated financial assets. Now everyone who is younger cannot afford any of those assets, housing included. The boomers risked the economy in the early 2000s, caused the crash in 2008, and then printed money to save themselves. This has pushed younger generations into what is essentially financial slavery.
Hey, whatever you need to tell yourself to feel better. Yet somehow the several generation between you and the boomers managed to make a go of it; how did that happen? I employ a number of these new grads and pay a salary that will more than pay for them to own a home in our market; how is this possible in your alternative universe? Maybe before you throw the word slavery around you should give some thought to what that actually means. HINT: it's a little more harsh than living with your parents.
I work as a software engineer at FAANG, I will retire young. Basically anyone who is young that doesnt work as an engineer or didnt go to a top school is completely shut out of decent housing near decent cities.
"Yet somehow the several generation between you and the boomers managed to make a go of it; how did that happen?"
This argument makes zero sense. Was going to make a reply, but forget it
The Bay Area is not representative of the US. There are plenty of cities with jobs and affordable housing. They may not be "cool" or located in "fly over country", but believe it or not, they exist.
There are a lot of “decent cities” where you can afford a decent apartment working making $40K a year. Apartments in the burbs of Atlanta are around $700-$800 a month.
The thing is - those wages only give you a meagre living. You cannot enjoy the finer things in life on a 40k salary.
The young people have been advertised to all their lives, and what would be considered luxury goods (like an iphone X) is no longer considered luxury, but a required accessory. What was considered, in the last half-century, a luxury food is no longer considered luxury today. Just having bread and staples isn't enough. And i don't blame them - being bombarded from a young age with advertising and media messages telling you that your life "should" have such and such, is making it harder and harder to live frugally.
According to paycheckcity.com. $40K a year in Georgia is a monthly take home of $2666 month single. I happen to know what living expenses are for a young single person because of my older son.
His rent, utilities, car note and car insurance is around $1800 all in. At least until he is 26 and can stay on my insurance.
The median household income in the US is only around $63000.
The median US household will never save enough to be able to comfortably retire, nor will they have sufficient savings or insurance to be able to deal with health issues or loss of income.
Why, assuming there's enough space for all of them? My grandparents lived 5 minutes walk from my parents when I was a kid & my uncle lived nearby with his family as well.
Altogether 6 adults and 7 kids. It was fine and if we lived in 3 adjacent houses that would have probably only been better IMO.
Multi generational family units that are also homesteads will be the future. Probably with robots and hydroponics rather than goats and hand weeding between turnips.
The combination of world class military apartus/nuclear power, not being able to collectively care for each other plus the feeling that parts of the nation are on the brink of a civil war is really keeping my gears grinding.
Compared to pre-Trump times talking to an US citizen feels either like to talking to someone in a delusional cult or like talking to someone who realized the american dream they told themselves existed is utter nonsense with no bearing in reality whatsoever.
Given that universities are largely online only and dorms are closed, it’s not surprising that large numbers of college age students would be moving home. Including them with people in their late 20s muddies the waters.