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The perception – or perhaps fear – that twenty-somethings are still hanging around the family home is based in fact, an influential think tank has concluded.
The proportion of 25 to 34 year olds still living with their parents has increased by more than a third in almost two decades, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
According to researchers, the trend toward living at home was driven by men and those in their late 20s.
High rental costs and rising property prices are the main reasons for this change.
I always fill the nest
In 2006, around 13% of Britons aged 25 to 34 lived with their parents.
Last year, that figure had risen to 18 percent, according to the IFS, an independent economic think tank.
That equates to around 450,000 additional young adults still living in the family home – with the increase concentrated among those in their late 20s, the researchers found.
Among those aged 25 to 34, men were more likely than women to live at home, 23% versus 15%.
The IFS said this age group had changed in recent decades and therefore become less likely to be married and have children. They were also more ethnically diverse and UK-born young people from Bangladeshi and Indian backgrounds were more likely to live with their parents.
The peak in the number of adult children living at home occurred during the pandemic, when more than a fifth of 25- to 34-year-olds did so.
Today, in more normal times, parents may hope that their adult children will fly the nest, but many twenty-somethings wish they could afford that.
The IFS said finances were a major sticking point, with rising rents and house prices fueling the trend.
Zach Murphy
One 25-year-old who moved back into his parents’ house was Zach Murphy, from London, who previously shared a flat with two friends. He raised his concerns with the BBC, as the BBC’s new housing tracking system showed the challenges facing the government’s housebuilding target.
A master’s student in environmental science, Zach was inspired by the ambition for a better job, but renting on your own was “out of the question, unless you wanted to live in a shoebox”, and buying always seemed out of the question. scope. .
“It’s getting harder and harder to save. It feels like there’s no hope of getting on the housing ladder in London,” he said.
In April, Jess Waring-Hughes, a 32-year-old business owner, said she was saving furiously to buy a house on her own.
Moving back to her parents’ house had seemed “weird” since she had moved into her childhood bedroom, and meant that she risked regressing to the habits of adolescence.
The savings challenge
The IFS concluded that some young people could save money by living at home. Around 14% of them had accumulated more than £10,000 over a two-year period, compared to around 10% of young adults living in private rented accommodation.
However, this was not true across the board due to potentially higher travel costs or because some had moved due to financial difficulties.
“For some, living with their parents offers the chance to build up savings more quickly than if they rented – which is a particularly valuable benefit in high-cost places like London,” said Bee Boileau, an economist at research at the IFS and author of the study. report.
“However, others are likely to live in their parents’ home due to some shock – such as the end of a relationship or redundancy – or simply because they cannot afford to live independently.”
Housing is one of the most important issues for people who contact us through Your Voice, Your BBC News.
