In India, where my wife is from, family lives together. Family is a big thing there. It is not uncommon to see mom and dad, daughter and son, grandmas and grandpas, or even aunts and uncles all living in the same home.
But once it was financially tenable in the unique financial circumstances of post-WW2 America for pretty much any man that wanted to could get a job with no education that gave him the financial means to "have it all".
Gradually the economy corrected itself, but there is a lot of cultural weight on the idea of success associated with living in your own home, regardless of the feasibility financially.
Well we want to give them the boot earlier but the timing of higher education and law generally sets the lower bar at 18.
In my experience parents and their children are operating in two completely different economies.
To be blunt in case I risk being overly oblique: 1/3 of the female students at my university did sex work to pay the rent. That's in a place where they worked hard to get into an elite university and didn't have to pay extraordinary tuition fees.
Further down the socioeconomic ladder it gets worse. Merely surviving without debt is a success story for a millennial.
I have to say: almost everything on this subject I read from the media is a fiction. I'm not saying the stats are made up, but the overwhelming impression you get from the box on the wall is powerfully wrong.
The basic cost of living (rent/council tax/water bills/food prices) has been gradually inflating while the cost of labour increased at a far more modest rate. This has been true for a long time. I think because it is a creeping thing it is harder to spot when the new normal began.
Anecdotal but several degree holders I knew in college (mostly accountants!) continue with prostitution afterwards as well because it is otherwise difficult to make ends meet.
The explanation I'm partial to is that the price of energy has stalled progress for most people in western society. When you look back to 1973 it is really quite dramatic but we are now used to high prices and the various accommodations made as side affects.
I know most people my age see 2008 as a break point, but the rot has been going on for much longer than that.
I find it hard to believe there's enough customers to make this viable, let alone that it actually happens. Do you have some source to back this claim up?
http://www.thestudentsexworkproject.co.uk/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/11499381/Student-sex-wo...
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/student-sex-workers-talk-abou...
What did all the male students do to solve the same problem? Just regular jobs?
If the girls were doing sex work just because it's easier/more-pleasant than spending 25hours per week waiting tables or stocking shelves then this doesn't seem to make much of a point.
On the other hand, if sex work is generally an act of desperation then I'm genuinely curious about what an equally desperate boy in similar circumstances tends to do.
It is a part of a culture than anything else. I think many Asian countries have similar culture. I am from India but live in Dubai and even in middle eastern cultures it is not uncommon to live with parents and other relatives in the same house as a big family.