Adults Moving Home Although the Practice Is Essay

Adults Moving Home

Although the practice is not new, it is becoming a common trend in twenty-first century America for adults to return home after college or even later in life to live with their parents. This practice breaks with the tradition of young adults living independently when they reach 18 years of age. While returning home after college has occurred since the early twentieth century, the numbers of adult children moving home has significantly increased since 2007. This development is the result of many factors.

High housing prices, the rising cost of higher education, and the relative affluence of the older generation are among the reasons adult children move to their childhood home to live with their parents. Today almost four in ten adults age sixty or older give money to their adult children while only about 12% get financial help from their offspring. The annual cost of a four-year public education has more than doubled over the last twenty years, while housing prices over the same period have more than tripled (Palmer). This trend has provided more wealth to the baby boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, while at the same time increasing the difficulty of the next generations to gain their independence.

According to a report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau the percentage of young adult men living in their parents' home rose from 14% in 2005 to 19% in 2011 and the percentage of young adult women living at home rose from 8% to 10% during the same period. Many point to the economic downturn over the past half decade as the chief impetus of this trend. Between 2008 and 2011 the household formation rate has fallen by more than half, with just 650,000 new households being formed annually during this period as compared to an annual rate 1.5 million between 1997 and 2007. A depressed job market is widely thought to be responsible for this phenomenon (Weston).

These so called "boomerang kids" who move home for financial stability are quickly becoming the new normal. One fourth of adults between the ages of 18 and 39 are currently living at home. Logically the fact that the U.S. population has been increasing steadily over the last 50 years would lead one to conclude that there are fewer adult parents in the country, so it should be no surprise that one-third of all parents have adult children living at home (Psaty). This means for many there is a new kind of burden facing future retirees, supporting their adult children well into their maximum earning years. This was a time when past generations were socking away the bulk of their retirement savings.

However, according to a recent study by Harris Interactive and National Endowmnent for Financial Education among the 40% of children who currently or recently lived at home with their adult parents 75% shared some of the fincial burden. Fifty-two percent helped their parents pay for…