A lot of chicks just aren’t fleeing the nest.
No, really. A recent study shows that a bigger share of young women ages 18-34 are living at home with parents or relatives in numbers that haven’t been seen since the 1940s, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Here’s what the analysis shows: These women are likely to be single, college educated and rooming with Mom and Dad because of mounting student debt and/or feeling the post-recession hangover of either unemployment or underemployment, according to the Pew analysis and experts.
“Young adults are taking longer to become independent and establish a household,” said Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me,” a book on Millennials. “The idea that you should settle into a stable job, buy a house and get married has fallen out of style. More and more Millennials believe they should take their 20s to explore, and that can sometimes be economically hard to pull off, forcing them to live at home.”
In 2014, 36.4 percent of young women were living with their parents or relatives, according to the Pew analysis released late last year. That surpasses the record high of 36.2 percent in 1940.
Marriage typically nudges men and women out of their parents’ homes, but today many women are delaying marriage, which also contributes to them staying in the nest longer. In 2013, 30 percent of young women were married, according to the analysis. That’s less than half the number of women who were married in 1940. The typical woman began her first marriage at age 27 in 2014, while in 1940 it was around age 21, according to the analysis.
Higher education also is playing a role. Statistics show that college students are more likely to live with family than young adults who aren’t in college. In 1960, only about 5 percent of young women were college students, according to the analysis. Today, about 27 percent are enrolled in college.
The percentage of men living at home is also on the rise. In fact, compared with women, a larger share of men—42.8 percent—were living at home in 2014, according to the Pew analysis. That’s still lower than the peak level in 1940, when 47.5 percent of 18- to 34-year-old men were living at home, according to the analysis.
