46 ms·

The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

• swyx 6y ago
  I am one of those people, though in my case it was not so much for cost saving reasons as it was the easiest means of leaving a coastal city that would clearly be hard hit by Coronavirus. oddly enough I'm morbidly curious about the decline in birth and marriage rates due to this whole episode. hard to hook up in your parent's home.
  • halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
    I'm curious as well but in the opposite. People are spending more time at home together, could there be a birth boom in Q1/Q2 of next year?
    • CalRobert 6y ago
      Maybe for first babies.
    • whynotminot 6y ago
      Apparently the divorce rate is skyrocketing. Wouldn't surprise me to see both results: lots of new babies and lots of broken relationships.
    • readarticle 6y ago
      Economic crises almost always cause huge drops in fertility rates, look at the US rate post GFC. Fertility being correlated with income levels, the people spending time at home together are already not going to have kids, the others are unemployed/under massive financial stress/still going to work.
    • caymanjim 6y ago
      I assumed there would be a baby boom, but so far the evidence doesn't support it. Google turns up plenty of statistics in opposition to the notion.
    • lm28469 6y ago
      > People are spending more time at home together, could there be a birth boom in Q1/Q2 of next year? Birth control is cheap and well understood these days, I doubt many people are actively trying to have kids during a pandemic (financial + health risks). If anything I'd expect more breakups than births
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Birth rates generally decline in times of uncertainty; most people are aware of and practice family planning. For many, having a child right now would be fiscally irresponsible.
      • swyx 6y ago
        not just fiscally - if you have a choice, why would you choose to go to the hospital for a traumatic process, tying up valuable doctors but also potentially exposing yourself to covid...
    • rileyteige 6y ago
      Anecdotally where I live several OB/GYNs (my wife is a resident) have told me they will be delivering a ton of babies over this upcoming winter, and that they are busier than ever - with obstetric cases. Also anecdotally, we're expecting our first - we were waiting for the right time, had it all planned out.. then COVID pulled the rug out from under everything so we said screw it and just went for it. I suspect we're not alone in this...
      • swyx 6y ago
        > screw it heh heh heh you sure did. congrats on becoming a parent soon!
• rtx 6y ago
  This is great news, it will reduce pollution. We need to live together.
  • peweewee 6y ago
    dont yall already live with roommates despite “huge” incomes in them valley cities?
  • loraa 6y ago
    You should move to India instead.
  • dzhiurgis 6y ago
    Cannot agree more. There's nothing wrong to live with your kids. I have a child now and would love to live with my parents (a little bit so they can take care of it) provided we all had big enough house.
  • danielrpa 6y ago
    In many countries it's not only acceptable, but customary to live with your parents if you are single - even well into your 30s. In parts of Latin America (most/all of it?), people will find it odd if you leave home "for no good reason".
  • bradlys 6y ago
    I don’t think living together is going to really make the impact eventful... it’s like saying, not buying that coffee in the morning is going to help you save money (with the pretense that not buying that coffee means you’ll be able to eventually afford a $2mil home on a $40k/year income).
• yardie 6y ago
  I live downtown in a coastal city. What I’m seeing is a lot of young men living in the streets. This is the other side of this story some young adults don’t have a home to go back to after job loss and eviction. We’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg. I expect a lot more social upheaval in the coming years. Social services are going to get severely strained.
  • _mkef 6y ago
    This has been the case in California for a long time. Unless we just forgive rent until a vaccine is out, many people will never catch up.
    • mathattack 6y ago
      This is very complex. Where does this end? I’m a renter. Do I need to prove I’ve lost my job to not pay? Do I get to skip out on paying for a luxury apartment if I have money in the bank? Does my landlord get to skip her mortgage? Or only the portion paid by my rent? What about the bank who holds the mortgage? Or the retired bond holder who ultimately gets the mortgage payments? Every step along the way requires somebody to not get paid. If the government intervenes, at which step should they do it? I’m not saying no actions should be taken, just that it’s more complicated than pure rent forgiveness. Perhaps the answer is some kind of short term UBI, but that gets expensive quick. Zero interest government loans puts the burden back on the individual. I’m not fully clear on how to beat balance individual ownership versus protecting the system from collapse. (The latter involves propping up the banks)
      • geofft 6y ago
        It is very complex, but what's the alternative? Widespread evictions (in the midst of "stay inside," no less)? A bad answer is so much better than none at all, in the same way that a badly-implemented draft and a poorly-trained army is a vastly superior response to an invasion than nothing. I think the starting principle I'd take is that this is going to go very poorly for some people, and our only decision is for whom it goes poorly. (After all, if we do nothing, it will clearly go poorly for many people, and as you point out there's no obvious solution where it works well for everyone.) There is a productivity loss that needs to be borne by someone, and it seems to me the obvious approach is to ask who can bear it with the least impact on the long-term good of society / the nation / humanity. The answer is probably that certain people in the chain you mention, possibly the landlord, probably the bank, and perhaps (but probably not) the retiree, can afford to just not get paid. It's unfair for them, but they will do fine: they won't lose out on revenue that they need to put food on the table or a roof over their heads (the whole point here is to keep roofs over heads). Everyone upstream of them gets to not pay them. And yes, it's unjust to take money from people (or really, require that people keep providing services without being paid for them) without their consent, but it's also unjust to draft people for a war without their consent. We do it anyway because the alternative - choosing to not fight the war - is unjust too.
• save_ferris 6y ago
  I moved back into my parents house after my lease expired, primarily to have regular social interaction again. > "While moving back home during the pandemic makes sense and is seen as socially acceptable or even smart, it also means you are living with people who still see you as your 18-year-old self." One of the biggest things I’ve noticed among millennials is how many parents fail to understand the emotional and mental situation of what their children are currently experiencing. I feel so incredibly lucky that my parents understand that I’m not 18, and they’re happy to help out during these uncertain times. I’m so much more productive working from my parents house because I now have enough space for a decent home office. I also have coworkers that have openly talked about how their parents refuse to let them move back in during the pandemic, citing the “time to grow up” mentality. I’m all for taking personal responsibility in one’s life, but there are a whole lot of older people out there that are oblivious to just how serious the pandemic has been economically.
  • collyw 6y ago
    I will probably be going against the grain here, but I managed to rent a flat by myself while in university years ago with a part time job in a supermarket at weekends and applying for some hardship funds and other money available at the time. Rents have risen a lot since then, but is it really impossible for someone in work to be able to afford rent? Or are they insisting on living in a fashionable part of town? (For me independence from my parents was quite a high priority in those days).
    • giantDinosaur 6y ago
      In a lot of areas normal jobs are literally impossible to do at the moment. It isn't a matter of whether or not people want to do them. In my city in a non-US country you actually are doing something illegal if you go to work in certain industries or undertake extremely common activities that were normal 6 months ago. This is unique and far beyond anything me (or my parents) have ever known. No obvious end to a lot of this is in sight.
    • claudeganon 6y ago
      Rents were already way above wage growth prior to the pandemic: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/census-income-rent-gap-grew-in-2018 https://www.cbpp.org/blog/census-income-rent-gap-grew-in-201... While I’m sure they’ve gone down a little in certain urban cores, like SF, they remain absurdly high in the midsize, Midwestern city where I grew up and now live. When I moved back, apartments here were going for only a bit less than what I paid in Los Angeles and seem to have not gone down at all. Home prices also remain artificially high because there are less listings and more interested buyers.
• Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I'm 26. Since the pandemic hit, my parents have been trying to convince me to move back in with them. I'm working remotely now, they say, so I don't have to live in the city, so I might as well live with them, right? I have to keep making different excuses. They don't seem to quite get the message that as much as I love them, I just don't want to live with them...
  • baud147258 6y ago
    At the start of the lockdown in France, my parents asked me to move back (temporarily) with them, mostly so that I don't spent all the lockdown alone. I nearly refused, because then I didn't though the lockdown would be so long, a few weeks at most. In the end I still went back for the duration of the lockdown and I'm thankful I did. But it was only temporary.
  • caymanjim 6y ago
    If you're doing ok on your own and your parents aren't worried about your financial capacity, they're probably just worried in general, about your physical or mental health, or their own. Sounds more like they just have the same general anxiety as most of us. They might want it for themselves more than you.
    • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I don't think they're worried, they just like to see me. Which, all things considered, I really appreciate—it's certainly better than the other way around. I guess the original reason I posted the anecdote is, I wonder how many of the people who've moved back home just did it because they could, since they're working remotely anyway.
  • compscistd 6y ago
    I was in a similar boat. I eventually said sure why not, might actually be great!, sold my house, and moved back in with them. A month later and now I live with my sibling because I hit my breaking point.
    • 6y ago
• wonderwonder 6y ago
  Millennials face a very real risk of being a lost generation financially. They have endured 2 major, years long recessions, and now the Covid pandemic coupled with social isolation and massive unemployment that does not appear to have an end date in sight. Housing is more expensive for them than prior generations, wages are stagnant, school is expensive and social conflict is also currently on deck. WW2 was of course a much more trying time but it was followed by massive economic growth for most sectors of the population, I don't see that happening after the pandemic, wealth is just being silo'd and prosperity limited.
  • sheeshkebab 6y ago
    Sorry, party is over, time to find real work
  • bengale 6y ago
    The optomisit in me hopes that when the truth about climate change really dawns then the effort to battle it could cause a similar transfer of wealth to a post war rebuilding. Lets hope we can actually solve the problem though or it wont matter much.
    • mantas 6y ago
      A lot of post-WW2 wealth transfer was from old failing empires to US of A. While climate change wealth transfer would accelerate transfer from US of A to ex-2nd and, especially, 3rd world. Either way, US and rich West people are looking to grim future compared to their parents. The rest of the world... We'll be fine one way or another.
      • wonderwonder 6y ago
        ? Climate change will disproportionately affect Africa and Asia.
        • mantas 6y ago
          A lot of international agreements seem to be geared towards rich countries paying off poor countries.
• djhworld 6y ago
  I'm 33 and will soon be moving back to my parents place in a different city. No point paying London rents for a tiny crappy apartment whilst WFH
• helge9210 6y ago
  > "While moving back home It's not their home, it's their parent's home. > still see you as your 18-year-old self or worse, as a failure.
• xchaotic 6y ago
  Multi generation homes used to be norm but societies became wealthy enough to move away from that ( and various frictions it creates) looks like we’re literally moving back. Good for the environment, bad for the economy and mental well being.
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    I think I could live with my parents in the house, but I could never live with my life and her parents in the same house (for longer than a few days).
  • rubidium 6y ago
    "Societies became wealthy enough..." I'd argue that value systems shifted. Consumerism and careerism took over family and home. "bad for the economy and mental well being"... quite the leap. It's good the family economy of those involved, and for many parents and children it can be a great thing for mental health as well.
  • joaomacp 6y ago
    Is it really bad for mental well being? I know a lot of people nowadays (including me) have the desire to live separately from parents. But mental health has been going down, with increasing rates of reported loneliness and isolation. Society has made us individualistic / "independent". But has it really made our mental health better? Edit: and as others have pointed out, more people living separately is not ecologically efficient / sustainable.
    • claudeganon 6y ago
      But in America, at least, a lot of people’s parents are fully gone down the road of selfishness and cruelty. It would be nice if we had a culture that encouraged multigenerational support, but you can’t pull that out of thin air. It’s something that would’ve needed to be in place prior to the pandemic. I think millennials may come out changed from this, as, at least in my experience, we’re already more supportive of each other and collectively-oriented then our parents generation, but that would be a change felt far off in the future.
• Cro_on 6y ago
  I grew up on the farm, but have spent most of my adult life living in big cities. But I take a month or so home most years for a bit of farm work / harvest celebration. Corono got me good traveling SEA in February, and have been now living and working at home since March. I could have never thought about living here beforehand. At least I always think that twenties and thirties are for the movement of the city, and then the farm work / home life can begin. But having been somewhat forced to force myself to settle for an indefinite period, it is giving me much appreciation for a different kind of life. Building stuff, farming and a lot of cooking / baking / fermenting has brought out a real positivity, which now seems impossible to find in the city. It's even got to the point where we've started inviting friends to come and live and work with us, and there seems to be that community feeling bubbling up all around. Commuting and travel seem so weird to me by this point, and I know that the logistics are hell to try and rearrange the entire economy to be kind of segmented, but I'm starting to believe that this is the only realistic hope we have left.
  • curiousllama 6y ago
    Don't let the awesomeness turn to pessimism! The gap between "this is great" and "this is the only realistic hope" is huge. Others - even outside of farm life - have found community too.
    • Cro_on 6y ago
      It's not pessimism! I guess it wasn't worded clearly, but I meant that it's the only hope for a less wasteful economy. EDIT to add: In the short term! Right now the infrastructure is totally oil based, and consumerism relies on ecological destruction. But I am definitely not saying that we can't have a global zero carbon everything you want economy. But that is a question that I do not have the patience or information to ponder seriously!
  • btbuildem 6y ago
    You're lucky to have access to that
• isabelc 6y ago
  This article fails to mention this as one of the reasons for young adults moving back home: college dorms being closed. Edit: that point is less important now that the article's title has changed. The title was like: 30 million young adults moved back to their parents.
• CalRobert 6y ago
  Those parents often shout about "greedy developers" (or, if pressed, "parking and neighbourhood character") when, heaven forfend, someone tries to build new homes near them. Treating homes an investment was one of the worst mistakes of the 20th century.
  • dcdevthrowaway 6y ago
    You say mistake as if it were an intentional choice that turned out to be a bad one. I don't know my history of this subject very well, did policymakers really sit down and encourage homes to be treated as investment, leading them to become less affordable? Or were homes becoming less affordable just the natural consequence of having an expanding population and fixed supply of land? I'd always sort of assumed the latter.
    • helen___keller 6y ago
      A consequence of low-density policy built in the days of white flight and redlining, actually. After a few decades of nobody having the rights to control their own property, it became ingrained that this is how it should be.
    • MrPowers 6y ago
      Congress made mortgage interest payments tax deductible in 1913, which gave folks an incentive to think of houses as investments. Increasing home ownership was an express goal of the Bush Administration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkAtUq0OJ68&ab_channel=vastgoedzeepbel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkAtUq0OJ68&ab_channel=vastg... They wanted to promote an "ownership society": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ownership_society Great questions.
    • francisofascii 6y ago
      There is a good NPR Podcast about the mortgage interest deduction and how it led to many unintended consequences like inflated prices and oversize houses, high mortgage debts, etc. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/23/613834765/most-inane-deduction https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/23/613834765/most...
• nateburke 6y ago
  What boomers say: "Time to grow up" What boomers mean: "Time to grow up, at least for now, while the company to which I pay my long term care premiums is solvent and likely to be able to provide care when I am frail, though it is looking like it might not always be the case, in which case I would prefer for you to live with me at that point."
• mrandish 6y ago
  One of the worst effects of all the blanket lockdown policies will be the long-term impact on an entire generation in both education and career.
• risyachka 6y ago
  As long as you don't move in with your parents permanently it can be a good idea even when you can pay rent by yourself. Depending on the city you live if you can save a ton of cash and spend some extra time with your family.
• zpeti 6y ago
  I think people need to start realising just how incredibly much the government is now stepping in at each of these crises to make them as smooth as possible. But there is a downside to this. You are not allowing the normal economic effects to happen because you are wanting to keep everything as it is, but then guess what, the status quo stays, and anyone joining the ladder is finding it increasingly difficult. What's amazing is how the narrative around this however is that we need MORE government to set things right. Yet in the tech bubble the government blew up the real este bubble, in 2008 all the banks got saved along with loads of other insurance and other businesses, and now we have the largest stimulus packages ever. (on top of government subsidised student loans, which have made loads of money available for college, pushing up prices). It's counter intuitive but in the long run this is BAD for anyone that doesn't already have something. It inflates asset prices, it locks in people who already have something. It's bad for millennials. And millennials shouldn't be arguing for more government intervention, but less. Let things fail, so that the waste can get burned off. Unfortunately it seems a lot of people think things literally need to be burned down for there to be change. But let's be clear, 30-40 years of interventions by governments did this, which is exactly what left leaning people want of government.
  • augustt 6y ago
    > Let things fail, so that the waste can get burned off I guess the waste here is people who simply can not pay for food or housing? What a naive take.
    • tenaciousDaniel 6y ago
      Hm, maybe that's how the statement should be interpreted, but I was interpreting it in light of the "too big to fail" mantra after the 2008 recession. Lots of banks and auto companies were bailed out to keep them afloat. So I interpret it as "let companies go bankrupt".
    • zpeti 6y ago
      No, it's zombie companies kept alive by stimulus cheques, and management who get to stick around and failing companies that should have gone under 20 years ago.
• microcolonel 6y ago
  I hope to build a household that the kids will consider staying without won't havinc to wait until a disaster strikes and 20 governors panic to find a way to avoid accountability by being "firm and comprehensive" rather than finding a balance.
• keiferski 6y ago
  I hope we see a cultural shift toward recognizing that so-called "flyover country" is actually ripe for re-development and cultural renewal. There are tens of thousands of small towns and cities in the Midwest in which buying a house is still possible for the average middle-class person. The main issue, of course, is the lack of jobs in the area, but with remote work growing, that might become less of an issue.
  • Loughla 6y ago
    Also, many rural areas have cooperatives for their internet and have gigabit fiber, now. I live 40-50 minutes from the closest 'town' and 3-4 hours from the closest urban center, and I will have fiber by the end of this month. Remote work is absolutely an option. That being said, no one should consider flyover country to move to. Please stay away from my flyover country, it's bad enough with east and west coast investment firms buying all the property and driving regular folks out of the market entirely. When my partner and I bought the property our home is on, in 2009, we paid ~$3,000/acre. This was a high price. The place next to ours sold last week for ~$13,000/acre to an investment firm from New Jersey. I feel a shift coming, and I feel like the smart money is way out in front of it - buying up land that would be ripe for development once people figure out how much cheaper it is in the country. And it's killing the people who live out here, right now. I can't imagine what it will look like if people start moving out here.
    • techsupporter 6y ago
      > And it's killing the people who live out here, right now. I can't imagine what it will look like if people start moving out here. To be blunt, this is what already happened to all of the "desirable" cities on the West Coast and, as those of us who've lived here since basically the beginning said: buck you, you can't stop it. Start preparing now for what a wave of migration looks like and take steps to make room for the new arrivals before they[0] show up and outbid everyone who's already there. Yes, this is going to look like "density" or "growth" or "change." Genuinely sorry, but the world is not a static place and since freedom of movement inside the United States is still a thing, all pretending that it won't happen or trying to make policies to limit it will do is turn whatever other area into one of haves and have-nots. 0 - I wrote "they" because I'm not leaving. I must be one of the tiny minority of people who likes where I live and have no plans to depart. If everyone else wants to pack up from the West Coast city where I live and move to Omaha, good on 'em.
• paul_f 6y ago
  A majority? That's astounding. Unless unemployed, why don't millennials do what we did in our twenties, find two or three roommates and split the rent?
  • Macha 6y ago
    Many of them already are, except in many cities, it's 5-6 housemates, including 1 actual roommate (as in sharing the same room). This is the case I would say for the majority of my mid-20s friends, except those in the software industry. In the software industry there's more people managing with just their partner or 1 housemate. Living alone is the least common. Is it that unreasonable that many would choose to go back to their parents when there's now no actual reason for them to be in that situation if they're working from home indefinitely?
  • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    >why don't millennials do what we did in our twenties Because we're not in our twenties anymore? We're supposed to start families now...
• ratsimihah 6y ago
  I've lived my 20s far away from home, and having moved back in in my 30s now, even if it took some time amd awkwardness, my parents understand I've grown and changed and they respect my need for space and intimacy.
• square_usual 6y ago
  Chiming in with the rest here. Moved in with my parents, and honestly I think this is great. I've traded in a bit of freedom for much healthier meals and people to talk with. I'm also saving a ton on rent, to the point where I'm throwing in nearly 70% of my paycheck into savings. I'm not thinking of keeping this up in the long term, but I'm glad I did this for now.
  • racl101 6y ago
    Exactly. If you have the opportunity take it. In other parts of the planet there isn't this weird pride that means the only way to assert independence is by having your own place. Most parents are happy that you just keep the area clean and chip in for groceries and rent. What's so bad about that? I guess it's only a bummer when you wanna get laid, but there's probably ways around that.
    • youredoneson 6y ago
      So here's the thing My parents suck and I want nothing to do with them really Everything in my life is better the less I deal with them Everything
      • bradlys 6y ago
        I think we’re going to have to accept we’re the uncommon ones around here. I don’t know what the stats are but I’ve got a feeling that most people on HN (particularly those in expensive cities) get along with their parents quite well. I’ve noticed in my time in SV that I’ve never really heard anyone say their parents are/were abusive. Or that they even really hated their parents. On the contrary, I hear most people liking their parents quite a bit. Abusive or terrible people for parents just don’t seem too common around these parts. Makes sense, abused children don’t tend to be rising stars - they kill theirselves instead. The higher you get, the more supportive the parents are. It’s hard to get far alone and without a kickstart.
        • racl101 6y ago
• kayodelycaon 6y ago
  A lot of my friends (and myself) have abusive parents. I seriously consider suicide to be a better option than going home.
  • eurekin 6y ago
    Please consider seeking prodessional help. Wish you all the best
    • taejo 6y ago
      Or just continue not putting yourself in dangerous situations.
      • jermaustin1 6y ago
        Or both. There is nothing wrong with therapy.
    • kayodelycaon 6y ago
      Already have it, but the US does not make this easy. It took me weeks of leaving voicemails that were never returned and then two months to get an actual appointment. My primary care doctor was unable to find anyone suitable in the local hospital network. They wouldn't even return his calls. If you're able to be persistent enough, try looking at Psychology Today. They let you search for therapists and psychiatrists in your area. (Ignore the articles, please ignore the articles.) If you don't have insurance or a lot of money, some providers may still be willing to work with you for a reduced fee. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us https://www.psychologytoday.com/us
  • HorizonXP 6y ago
    I no longer feel like this about my parents now that I live independently and have my own child. They’re wonderful grandparents. But yeah, when I was living with them in my 20s for my Masters? I felt just like you did.
    • 6y ago
• a2tech 6y ago
  My wife has a staff of 20 and most of them are young-ish. Like a few years out of college, first real professional job. About half of them have packed up their apartments and gone home to their parents. They're still paying their rent but they're living with their parents so they can have a little social interaction and have more room than their apartments. Its caused a little concern with the higher ups because they didn't realize people were leaving the local area. Lots of internal arguments over it.
  • milkytron 6y ago
    Are they all working remotely, and did they have permission to? I'm curious why there would be arguments over this, why would higher ups want people to stay put when the work is remote anyway?
    • bradlys 6y ago
      Time zone differences. Remote people are less likely to want to come back to the office after or might be slow to do such (“cant yet. Have to find a place to live. Will take months.”) Taxation purposes. Plenty of reasons afaict.
      • techsupporter 6y ago
        > Remote people are less likely to want to come back to the office after or might be slow to do such I'm in the same area code as my employer and I am far less likely to want to come back to the office after. My "office" is a 15-person open space pod with no barriers, no door, and a handful of breakout rooms per floor for one-on-one meetings that are always occupied by someone camped out in there for the entire day (the lunch wrappers and multiple soda cans are a dead giveaway). Meanwhile, at home, my family might be in a smallish apartment but I have a bedroom I can use as a home office, my own food with all of the zero-sugar soda I can buy, a restroom where no one is ever sitting in a stall gabbing away on the phone, and I'm not sitting four feet from my boss' shoulder while we're both doing technical calls. I never want to go back, and I loved my commute.
• x87678r 6y ago
  Its pretty disgraceful that for 99.99% of millennials covid is just a mild disease. We're shutting down everything for the benefit of baby boomers again. When its all over there will be no thank-you. House prices aren't even getting cheaper so young people again be shafted. Its crazy.
  • brianmcc 6y ago
    To be fair there are quite a few millennials for whom loss of beloved parents and grandparents to an avoidable cause would be something of a downside too...
  • umanwizard 6y ago
    Anecdotally, I find that the lockdown is much more strongly supported among millennials than among older people. They may claim they’re doing it for the benefit of boomers, but did the boomers actually ask for it?
  • wonderwonder 6y ago
    Your argument is that we should just let older people die? No offense but I disagree, I really don't want my parents to pass away from a pandemic we could have absolutely under control if people and our government just acted responsibly. Your comment is "pretty disgraceful"
  • srtjstjsj 6y ago
    This comment posted on a computer invented by baby boomers.
• iopq 6y ago
  I did that in my twenties, then I got some good investment returns and retired. Traveling everywhere all year long was amazing before... the current situation.
• Philip-J-Fry 6y ago
  I'm my early 20s and in the UK. I earn more than my Dad who is in his 50s. He managed to get a house, have money left over for an expensive hobby, decent car, the odd holiday etc. I'm a 90th percentile earner. Will 95+ percentile earner in a few years time. Yet it feels like I am not as well off as I should be. I don't live in an expensive area either. Yet I need to save so much money to even have the opportunity to buy a house. Then I also need to save a tonne of money for a nice retirement as government pensions get absolutely gutted. I'm not going to pretend I won't have a good amount of disposable income even after maxing my pension contributions and paying a mortgage. But it just annoys me that I'm a relatively high earner and yet the money won't go very far. The most expensive thing I'll ever buy would be a brick box, and one that's not even as good as my parents.
  • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I’m in my mid fifties and I have never had a company pension, defined benefit or contribution. I saw my first house decline in value by 25%. We had interest rates peaking at 15%. I didn’t have student loans but only because I didn’t go to university, just like 90% of my peer group. Unemployment was much higher than it is now and schools were teaching subjects for obsolete careers. It wasn’t as rosey as it is often portrayed.
    • xenonite 6y ago
      Okay, but we’re you in the 90+ percentile like the OP? What happened to those that were in that range 30 years ago?
    • dweekly 6y ago
      RE: "unemployment was much higher than it is now" - I'm not sure what country you're in, but here is a graph of the US unemployment rate since 1950: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE (unemployment was higher this year than any other period on the chart)
      • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
• racl101 6y ago
  Is this a problem for non Americans and other cultures where living with family is just the norm?
  • ativzzz 6y ago
    Probably not, hence the article being about the US
• dcolkitt 6y ago
  > Housing is more expensive for them than prior generations I harp on this constantly. But housing is not more expensive in the majority of American metros. Adjusted for inflation the median cost per square foot of new housing is almost exactly the same as it was in 1990. (This doesn't even take into account that mortgage rates are drastically lower since then.) We get skewed on this for two reasons. One is because homes today are substantially larger and have more amenities than they did in previous generations. We take for granted better fire safety, higher ceilings, central A/C, higher load electrical circuits, attached garages, better lighting, and swimming pools that are much more common in new construction. Two is that we're highly skewed to a handful of elite metros, whose housing markets are not representative of the country as a whole. Housing is expensive in San Francisco, New York, LA, and DC. But in places like Tampa, Omaha, Cincinnati, and Phoenix the cost of housing (per square foot) has barely gone up at all. The demand for ultra-expensive housing in places like the Bay Area is driven by the huge earning potential of the high-skilled labor market. (Of course the supply side of the equation is driven by NIMBY zealotry.) If you're talented enough to make it as an L8 at Google, then it probably does make sense to buy a house in Palo Alto. You'll earn far more money than you would in the St Louis tech scene. more than enough to make up for the living costs. But unless you have the potential to become an L8 at Google (or equivalent), it makes no financial sense to choose to live in the Bay Area instead of Raleigh. It's like somebody who works as a back office bookkeeper insisting on buying custom tailored Seville Row suits for his work attire, then complaining that the costs of clothes has gotten out of hand.
  • elektor 6y ago
    That's a valid point but millions of people live and work in SF, NY, LA, and DC. Their needs for housing should be acknowledged as well.
    • TuringNYC 6y ago
      I dont think this is a regional problem -- it is a problem of income/price and income/rent ratios off the historical chart almost regardless of where you live. It is a worse problem in SF, NY, LA, and DC but still a universal problem.
• matthewheath 6y ago
  I earn more than my family or my peers earn, but living in London often feels like my money comes in and goes out again immediately. As a result, I currently live with my family in an extraordinarily nice house that I would never be able to afford myself. I pay them a nominal sum for rent; they refuse to take the market rate even though I am happy to pay it... I look at the rental cost of a standard 1 bedroom flat in my part of London, and they want £1,200/month just in rent. It would be cheaper to get a mortgage, but I fail the "affordability" tests. Perhaps I am selfish, but I am not so desperate to move out to a relatively inferior property in which I possess no interest (since I will merely be renting) for that sum. I don't believe I'll ever be able to afford a house, especially as wage growth allegedly stagnates and then seemingly declines past the age of 40. If these are my "peak earning" years, then I'm quite sad because at this rate I'll be trapped at home forever. It would be fine if rents were about the same as a mortgage: one could rent while saving. At the moment though, renting while saving seems eminently unaffordable.
  • lol768 6y ago
    > It would be cheaper to get a mortgage, but I fail the "affordability" tests I naively thought that these affordability tests would involve looking at whether my take home income minus my monthly costs was higher than the monthly cost of the mortgage. That sounds like a reasonable definition of "affordable", right? We can account for increases in interest rates too. In reality, the amount of ridiculous hoops that need to be jumped through to quality as being able to "afford" a mortgage is silly, and it never used to be like this. Current employment contract less than a year old? Denied, even if you've been at the same company longer than that. Contractor without 2 years of Ltd company history? Welp. Want to use help to buy? That'll limit your pool of potential lenders even further.
    • CodeyWhizzBang 6y ago
      There's also the point that banks want you to put down a sizeable deposit so that if the market crashes and you lose your job they can sell the house, recover their outstanding debt and you lose your deposit. So you might be able to afford £1,200 a month in mortgage payments (which on a 30 year mortgage could mean you could borrow £400,000) but you'd need a 20% deposit, meaning you'd need to have saved up £100,000 to take advantage of it. And even then, for £500k in London that's, what an okay 2 bed flat.
• adnjoo 6y ago
  In Asia this is normal. Nothing wrong with living with your parents. Housing is so expensive nowadays; unless we build upwards and zone apartments/ condos over SFH.
• ponker 6y ago
  Some of this is voluntary. I have no financial problems but my wife and kids and I moved in with my parents / her parents alternating every few months to avoid total isolation.
• thisisbrians 6y ago
  This headline is flat-out wrong (and should be changed, please, @dang). About 2.5M young adults in the US have moved in with their parents since February, 2020: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
  • dang 6y ago
    Ok, we've changed the title to a different phrase from the article. Thanks!
• Tarsul 6y ago
  I'm sorry but the title is misleading. It's not that 30M young people (18-29) are living with their parents due to Corona but more that the number has grown from 24M to 26,6M in America [!] since February. Meaning the title should rather be: "The pandemic has pushed 2,6M young Americans to move in with their parents." see the linked source from the article: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-... edit: i see the title has already been corrected, HN is great :)
  • segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    Ironically, it's already the 3rd title on Hacker News. Two previous titles all received complaints for being misleading. let's hope this one is good enough.
  • Valgrim 6y ago
    Question: How many americans have reached 18 since february? Census says 4,021,726 americans were born in 2002, so 7 months since february: (7/12*4,021,726=2,346,006) + immigration... I'm not so sure this is how we should read those numbers. It could also mean that the majority of young people reaching 18 chose to stay with their parents a bit longer because of the pandemic.
    • gruez 6y ago
      > Question: How many americans have reached 18 since february? Isn't that mostly canceled out by all the americans reaching 30?
      • alextheparrot 6y ago
        If the age-in population has a 75% incidence and the age-out population has a 25% incidence it won’t cancel out. The age-in population will be adding a lot more than the age-out will be subtracting.
• munificent 6y ago
  I really love the quote at the end: > I'm a dad who is happy to have his daughter and fiancé living with me. They pay the utilities and make me nice meals, and it makes it a lot less lonely here. ... I like the multi-generational thing. I know it won't last forever, but it makes life better for now. It's so easy to get into that cold statistical mindset about these large-scale trends, but it's good to remember that these statistics are the aggregation of a large number of very human stories.
  • throwaway2048 6y ago
    Now imagine all the human stories that are forced into this situation that aren't heartwarming.
    • eternalban 6y ago
      You mean all the entirely predictable situations, like guaranteed increase in sexual abuse and domestic violence? When this genius plan was announced in late winter, I couldn't help but think of all those poor souls who lost whatever safe space (school, library, job, whatever) they had that kept them away from an abusive person in their lives, who were now together 24/7 under psychological and economic stress. Of course, the spirit of moderation requires that we consider both criminal incompetence as well as sociopaths with grand visions for the "betterment" of humanity and our planet, as an explanation as to how we ended up like this. [p.s. one fine day, the internets will unequivocaly sing the same song, with not a single person suffering from misunderstandings. That fine day, HN will do away with anonymous downvotes, since we will be in a state of perfect harmony.]
      • hunter-gatherer 6y ago
        I'm not sure why you were down-voted so much. There are real negative consequences for a State-wide lockdown that aren't immediately as obvious and the consequences of not locking down. I'm curious how in depth that analysis/discussion was, or if everything has been just knee-jerk reactions to the latest news and data points.
• irrational 6y ago
  My 21 and 23 year old daughters have moved back in with us. They stay up until the wee hours of the morning watching streaming media, then wake up mid afternoon to get on social media, eat dinner with us and then repeat. I can't wait till they leave. At least when they are living on their own I don't have to know about their bad habits.
  • formerly_proven 6y ago
    Are they both NEET or is them being unemployed temporary/covid-related? FWIW there is obviously a big difference between people being employed and living under one roof versus having a bunch of NEETs in the basement.
    • irrational 6y ago
      What is NEET?
      • macmmajor 6y ago
        Not in education employed or training
  • rosywoozlechan 6y ago
    As someone who's faced end of life fears, this kind of perspective is very different from the one you might get when you're realizing your time on this Earth is suddenly limited. I'm not saying you're not frustrated, but there's more to consider. I love having my kid around, even though we are sometimes annoyed with each other.
  • SrslyJosh 6y ago
    > At least when they are living on their own I don't have to know about their bad habits. Wow, maybe have a little empathy. The world is on fire and the future is bleak.
    • irrational 6y ago
• dheera 6y ago
  It's worth noting that a huge number of universities and colleges have shut their doors and doing online learning, which accounts for probably a large number of the 18-22 year olds and many of the 23-25 years olds. Unemployment is a thing, but there are also many people who have gone home because they can't be social with friends during lockdown and for some, being social with parents is better than being alone. And then there are people with kids who can't cope with the kids being around at home (instead of school) while trying to do work at the same time, so they use their parents' free babysitting services. In short, there are many people who are choosing to be home for very valid reasons rather than NEET and economically forced to be home. There really isn't enough data in this article to make much sense of how to interpret this. Numbers split out by reasons would be nice.
  • smadge 6y ago
    It has been a mostly steady trend since 1960 at 29% to now where it is at 52%. All of your examples of young adults choosing to live with their parents are because of COVID-19, which can only account for the 5% increase since February 2020, not the other 18% increase since the 1960s.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• unemphysbro 6y ago
  I did it. Spend the last decade trying to get into graduate school/graduate school. Finished up my phd this year as covid hit while I'm job hunting in industry. I couldn't justify spending my savings on rent. So far, it's been mutually beneficial, I keep my savings to a minimum while I job hunt and I help around wherever I can. It's also been great reconnecting with my parents as more mature person.
• woah 6y ago
  This is wild conjecture, but could it be that part of the trend of young people living with their parents is that the older generation has monopolized housing. The baby boomers have clamped down in a historically unprecedented way on the construction of new housing with height limits, environmental and shade analysis, obstructionism in local government, extremely high subsidized housing requirements for new projects etc etc. This has massively pumped up the value of their houses, but now their children can't find somewhere to live by themselves.
• romanoderoma 6y ago
  Welcome to Italy. It's not as bad as it sounds, believe me.
• bfrog 6y ago
  I'm a huge fan of the multigenerational house, having grown up in one myself and now being the middle generation in a 3 generation house, it's really amazing there's always help and conversation to be found.
• rafaelvasco 6y ago
  Living with parents until late 20's is just harmful if you don't have a job, don't do anything and just live supported by parents, because you're lazy or some similar reason. There's those cases. But if you have the means to go living alone you tend to develop faster since you have to handle everything, manage your responsibilities etc. In my case, I left my parents home when I was 30. Bit late by some people's standards, ok by others. I did just right because I was already very mature by that point. It can be hard for your parents at first, but it's for the best in the long run. I guess leaving by 30 could be a sweet spot depending on your family situation.
• denismcinerny 6y ago
  I just don't believe insights like this when 90% of the people I know in this age demo aren't living at home..
• WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  There are 5 18-29-year-olds in this house (plus myself). Here's what we learned. Very, very few companies will consider an applicant without a job history. Felons tend to have easier time finding employment than HS Graduates. Which companies hire w/o job history? Applicants don't know. It's not like companies advertise their hiring bias. Sometimes word of mouth may lead you to a reasonable employer - in which case the applicant can expect to compete against countless other applicants, for the one available position. This is reality. Part of it anyway. The rest isn't any better.
  • nsm 6y ago
    This is an excellent point. I know someone who is having a really hard time finding jobs because they just got out of school, but there are hardly any entry-level positions and the ones present are highly contested. They must have applied to >200 places at this point. This is in a non-software, but STEM field.
    • WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      I have one son who took 4 years to score a job. In between applying to every local job listing, he also walked door-to-door trying to find an unadvertised position (which didn't work out). He had state food prep certifications. The ALF who eventually hired him got a worker who's on time every day, easy to get on with & does his job with consistency and competence.
• 1DRACOSEA8 6y ago
  Don’t know if hacker news friendly but we are by De facto spelled checked for DeWitt yet no physics on here; the proverbial chickens, and no, no Nicaraguan children at the border; 1/8 are of actual Cuban descent; that don’t count in actuality. Because revolutions matter; revolutions count. Marxist Guerillas did win the Cold War. Ahem, I digress, we are by de facto, not wit, a third world country.
• dannykwells 6y ago
  I live with my wife's parents. Well, really, they live with us. And I think it is glorious. Always someone around to chat with, play a game with. We get last minute childcare help and sit cooking, cleaning and upkeep. For them, well they get super cheap rent in the place they want to live and tons of grandkid time. Multi generational housing is the the norm in so many societies. For the US to constantly bemoan it speaks mostly to our fucked up family culture and little else. I couldn't be happier living with extended family and hope to do so for a long time.
• buzzert 6y ago
  Important thing to consider: a majority of 18-29 year-olds also probably normally live in dense cities, and dense cities have lost nearly all of their appeal during the pandemic. So it might not be a financial thing necessarily, but instead people just wanting to go back to having a room in the suburbs to escape their shitty box in the city.
• loughnane 6y ago
  My wife and I are living with her parents... because my mother-in-law has moved in with us so that she can moderate our kids remote learning sessions while my wife and I both work. It's not _great_, but it's not bad. Either way, I think we should get used to it. The Economist [0] had a great special report recently that highlighted something I think we all know but don't think about; old people need care and we don't know how we're going to pay for it. The idea of elders going off to homes is relatively recent. Multi-generational homes are not just, as the OP points out, geographical unique, they are also historically unique. I suspect the next few decades will have more multi-generational homes. What this means for gender roles (the burden of all sorts of care tends to be disproportionately carried by women), work-life balance, rural vs urban preferences, remains to be seen. Either way, having family nearby will become increasingly relevant, which is a big deal for the U.S., where people tend to move around more freely. [0] https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/08/27/the-big-question-about-dementia-care-is-who-is-going-to-do-it https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/08/27/the-big-...
• tchaffee 6y ago
  I remember our family of five children, two cars, pool (but above ground), most vacations were camping but we did make it to Disney World. We had lots of nice stuff as kids, but it was solidly middle class. My mother stayed home while my father worked an eight hour day as an engineer at the local factory. He never worked overtime or weekends. All this with a bachelor's degree. My mother eventually went back to work so my parents retired quite early. American workers have been conned into creating the very wealthiest people in the world by continuing to give up more and more earning power, every year, and for being more productive. Europe is slightly better thanks to good public benefits, but it has also gone in the same direction: making the wealthy far wealthier than they were in the past. I can understand why this latest generation has little enthusiasm for doing anything extra at work. Good for them. Maybe things will eventually head back in the right direction for the middle class in developed countries.
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    I wouldn't say it's a con. In the end capital has bargaining power over labor because labor works for capital. Labor needs to organize very hard to take back control and that's difficult when everyone is scared they'll lose their job. Capital is able to make unilateral decisions because it's usually controlled by single/very focused and competent entity.
    • danlugo92 6y ago
      > is scared they'll lose their job I wonder how much is this due to person-level decisions such as poor life/financial planning and inherited low socio-economic class.
    • ausbah 6y ago
      it isn't just bargaining power or losing your job, it goes to the extent of lobbying gov'ts to be prolificly pro-business and anti-union, indoctrinating workers to view organizing as against their interests, and in some cases literally waging war against their employees
    • tchaffee 6y ago
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  My mom moved in early feburary due to mental health issues, but it has been a huge help to have her around, and great for her mental health!
• inamberclad 6y ago
  I think HN is insulated from the stresses of growing up in the US today. I'm on the younger side and many of my friends felt tremendous relief when they moved away from their parents. So I'm sure it's good for some, but don't discount the people who are feeling trapped right now.
• simonw 6y ago
  Does the USA have enough housing for this not to be the case?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• advertising 6y ago
  Much like Europe already
• ineedasername 6y ago
  Historically, and in other parts of the world, families would live together for longer periods of time like this. I'm not sure why much of Western culture got away from this behavior, but it's interesting that a lot of the driving factors are economic rather than (only) issues of family connection.
• Datsundere 6y ago
  Funnily enough, there was a thread on hacker news where this guy was saying that his friend who lived with his parents was a coward and therefore everyone that lives with their parents are cowards. I guess majority of 20 year olds are cowards then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24158219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24158219
• 01100011 6y ago
  These sorts of threads seem to spiral down the drain rather quickly. There is a rather large disconnect between the opinions of most 20-40, 40-60, and 60+ year olds. I hope we find a way to bridge those gaps, understand where the real problems are, and find solutions. For what it's worth, I'm 45 and I feel like the last 25+ years were filled with a lot more wealth and choices than when I grew up. I feel like expectations are higher than ever, and the number of things one needs to buy in order to have a complete life is higher than ever. There are many expectations, like owning a detached, single-family home, which do not seem practical in many highly populated regions. I feel bad for the younger folk, because they have inherited dreams which may never become true. That said, as the child of two parents who both worked hard at full-time, well-paying jobs just to provide a modest lifestyle for my family(home, but no cars, no college, etc), I feel like some in the younger generation are judging by an inaccurate yardstick. The HN community, which is far, far removed from average America, is likely to feel even more bitter. They've often been sold on the idea that they are highly paid professionals, and they are, but their location(Bay Area, NYC, DC, Seattle, etc) prevents them from having the life they think that should buy them. Unfortunately with the way wealth is distributed geographically in the US, it is unlikely they will ever really feel that wealth until they relocate.
• anonu 6y ago
  > Those living arrangements can come with a great deal of awkwardness and pain Says who? Random article by random author? Why sensationalize something so commonplace and banal?
• satisfaction 6y ago
  This is how is should be.