Millennials are staying home longer in record numbers, and for the first time in 130 years more young people are living with their parents than with a significant other.
According to a new study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, 32.1 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 are living at home with their parents while 31.6 percent are living with a spouse or romantic partner. In 1960, some 62 percent of adults in the same age group were living with a spouse or partner.
"It's worth noting that the overall share of young adults living with their parents was not at a record high in 2014," Pew wrote in a statement.
"This arrangement peaked around 1940, when about 35 percent of the nation's 18- to 34-year-olds lived with mom and/or dad. What has changed, instead, is the relative share adopting different ways of living in early adulthood, with the decline of romantic coupling pushing living at home to the top of a much less uniform list of living arrangements."
According to the U.S. Census,
noted the Los Angeles Times, the typical woman living in the United States marries at 27 years old and the typical male at 29. Back in 1956, the typical woman married at 20 years old and the typical male at 22 years old.
"We've simply got a lot more singles," said Richard Fry, lead author of the report and a senior economist at the Pew Research Center. "They're the group much more likely to live with their parents. … They're concentrating more on school, careers and work and less focused on forming new families, spouses or partners, and children."
Luke Delorme, research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research,
told Forbes that growing student debt and changing views about living at home may also have had an effect on the new study's numbers.
"Young people have more debt, a higher cost of living and stagnant relative wages," Delorme said. "My suspicion is that I think there has been a change in attitude both on the part of parents of young adults as well as the young adults themselves about this living arrangements."
The Pew Research statement added that with only a handful of exceptions, since 1880 young men across all races and ethnicities have been more likely than young women to live in the home of their parents.
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