One of the great rites of passage for a young woman–or a young man–has long been moving into that first apartment after college, symbolic of independence and new responsibilities.
But a record number of young women–and young men–are not embarking on this adventure.
A Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau finds that more young women are living at home now than at any time since the 1940. Pew reports:
A larger share of young women are living at home with their parents or other relatives than at any point since the 1940s.
A new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that 36.4% of women ages 18 to 34 resided with family in 2014, mainly in the home of mom, dad or both. The result is a striking U-shaped curve for young women – and young men – indicating a return to the past, statistically speaking.
You’d have to go back 74 years to observe similar living arrangements among American young women. Young men, too, are increasingly living in the same situation, but unlike women their share hasn’t climbed to its level from 1940, the highest year on record.
Back in 1940, 36.2% of young women lived with their parents or relatives. That number dropped over the next couple of decades as marriage rates increased and women began joining the workforce in larger numbers, becoming financially able to live on their own.
Unlike the young women who were still at home in the 1940s, today's stay-at-home daughters are more likely to have gone to college and to be unmarried than in previous generations. Modern women are delaying both marriage and moving out of their parental house.
More young men are remaining at home also–indeed at a higher rate than their female counterparts. A little more than forty-two percent of men aged 18 to 34 were living at home last year. While this is a higher percentage than women, it is not as high as in 1940, when 47.5 percent of 18- to 34-year-old men lived with their families. Pew attributes the 1940s highs to lingering effects of the Depression.
These stats also say something about the ability and inclination of young people set up on their own to form families of their own. That they are not doing so is also a commentary on the economy today. Hot Air's Ed Morrissey nails it:
The big jump o[in stay-at-home young adults] occurred in the last 15 years, some of which is obviously due to the Great Recession in 2008-10. However, that trend did not decline during the so-called Obama recovery — in fact, it continued upward at the same rate.
This is clearly not just about marriage rates, or a narrow economic effect. It’s a result of misguided economic policies that are stripping opportunity from younger Americans, and overburdening a generation of parents who need this period of time to build enough wealth for issues that will come in their later years.
If current economic policies continue, we're going to see more and more young women and men fail to leave the nest and establish homes of their own. As Morrissey says, this should be an issue in the presidential race next year.