In poor and lower-middle class families, it is quite common for a teenage son or daughter to contribute to the rent or power/telephone bill out of the money the

In poor and lower-middle class families, it is quite common for a teenage son or daughter to contribute to the rent or power/telephone bill out of the money they make working minimum wage jobs. If Mom and/or Dad are also working minimum wage jobs, it's impossible to pay mortgage payments in even relatively-inexpensive large cities. As a personal anecdote, my grandmother helped her family pay the rent when she was a teenager by working as a waitress. Her father had died at a young age. My parent's and my generation were both fortunate enough to not have to worry about this. Unfortunately, here in the US, this type of family arrangement will only increase in the future, given the fact that this generation is the first generation in modern US economic history where the a generation is worse off financially than their parents were at the same age.