Washington
Nick asked that his last name not be used. “Would it be shameful?” I ask. He answers no. “Just privacy.”
The 26yearold never left his parents' house in fact, they were the ones leaving the property now. In retirement, they moved from New York to Mexico in August.
For the Brazilian reader, the dynamic may not seem particularly current, as it is common there for children to live with their parents after the age of 18. However, the situation is relatively new in the USA until recently, living with parents after reaching adulthood was considered a failure.
However, as the trend consolidates helped by the pandemic the stigma is also fading, although it is far from being taken for granted.
According to the U.S. Census, in 1960, only 22.5% of adults ages 18 to 24 lived in the same household as their family. In 2020, the first year of the Covid outbreak, this percentage reached 33.6%. The most recent data available, the preliminary percentage for 2023, is 32.4%.
“It is much cheaper to maintain a house in Queens, which adds up to around US$2,000 (R9,720) in expenses when taking into account the mortgage and other fixed costs, than renting an apartment with friends elsewhere in New York,” Nick says.
Quality of life is also important to him: the property is spacious, has a backyard and is in a quiet area. He states that he could find something in a better location for a similar cost, but that would be much smaller and run down.
The young man also says that it would be impossible to save money if he did not live at home.
He's not an outlier: According to Nick, many of his school friends and cousins also stayed in their parents' house until they were 30, motivated by this costbenefit calculation. “Everything in New York has become more expensive. It’s more expensive than San Francisco,” he complains.
In fact, the increase in the cost of living is one of the main reasons for extended family stays. Prices in the U.S. have skyrocketed during the pandemic, reinforcing a more structural, longterm trend of rising education and housing spending over the past decade.
A recent survey by the American Central Bank Fed found that it has never been more difficult to buy a property in the country: the median price (the “middle” between one extreme and the other, not the average) is 4.6 times the median income of a family.
Another less materialistic factor in this trend is that Americans are marrying later, around age 30, or not at all a classic moment of break from the family home.
In 1970, only 17% of people over 18 had never been married. In 2021, that percentage was 31%, according to Pew Research Center.
Financial barriers to leaving one's home country and cultural changes have influenced public opinion on the issue.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, the majority of Americans (42%) believed that keeping young people in their parents' home had a negative impact on society. In 2021, this proportion has fallen to 36% the majority, 47%, now believe this fact makes no difference.
There is a significant difference by race or ethnicity: White people view the situation most negatively (41%), while this percentage is less than 30% for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics.
Asians are the most likely to say the dynamic is having a positive impact (27%). For blacks and Hispanics, this figure is 24% and 23%, respectively.
In addition to those who do not leave their homes, there are those who return the socalled “boomerang children”. This has been one of the growth factors during the pandemic, as many young people returned to their parents' homes after losing their jobs or ending a relationship, among other things.
The situation is a popular premise in American pop culture, with countless films and series combining the moment with much stress and confusion for parents the classic of the genre is “Armações do Amor” from 2006, but its translation from English to English translated to Portuguese It is “failure to take off”.
However, recent research from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found no evidence that boomerang children harm parents' finances, work life, health, or overall happiness.
On the contrary, the study based on the Health and Retirement Survey identified benefits of cohabitation as it reduces empty nest syndrome and enables shared responsibility for domestic activities.
The data refers to parents between the ages of 51 and 69 with children up to 30 years old.
“We show that real income and marital crises lead some children to return home and that this situation is often temporary in nature,” say study authors Grant M. Seiter, Mary J. Lopez and Sita Slavov.
“Adult children seem to return to their parents’ home as insurance. While the father may believe he has to work past 65 because of his boomerang child, there is no actual change in the labor supply and only small declines in life satisfaction “The mother explains herself about her health. The mother does not experience a decline in her wellbeing, health or wealth,” they conclude.
The researchers do not give reasons for this gender difference. A similar split can be observed in the profile of young people living with their parents: the proportion of men aged 18 to 24 is 6 percentage points higher than that of women.