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About 67 percent of Millennials and Generation Z young adults who moved in with parents when the COVID War began are still there, a survey by financial broker LendingTree found.
People ages 25 to 34 make up the largest cohort of adult children living “at home.”
A small number have invited their parents to live with them, but the majority have moved back to their parents’ houses.
Most were driven home by the loss of a job, high housing costs, and the burden of student loans, the survey showed.
Now record-high rents and surging costs of everyday expenses are keeping them there.
“With inflation as high as it is and with [interest] rates rising, it can be difficult for anyone to make ends meet in today’s economy,” Jacob Channel, LendingTree’s senior economist, said in a statement accompanying the survey report.
The number of multi-generation households has quadrupled since 1970 and now represent 18 percent of families living together, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
About 25 percent of young adults live with parents, compared with 9 percent 50 years ago, Pew reported.
The trend is strongest among men and young adults without college degrees, who usually earn less than those with a college diploma.
Living with relatives “is a private social safety net for them,” Richard Fry, a senior Pew researcher, told CNBC.
Young adults living at home cover an average of 22 percent of household expenses, counting on parents to pay the rest, Pew found.
Although supporting adult children can place older parents’ financial well-being at risk, Pew found that multigenerational households tend to be less financially vulnerable than their single-generation counterparts.
TREND FORECAST: U.S. economic conditions will get much worse before they get a bit better.
Therefore, “boomerang kids” will have neither the means nor a strong incentive to leave the nest in the foreseeable future.
Multigenerational households will grow in numbers and become part of the “new normal.”
More frequently than in the past, children will live with parents through much of their adult lives, then inherit those homes and continue living in them when parents die.