More than half of 18 to 29-year-olds in the US are living with parents
msn.com
msn.com
Given that universities are largely online only and dorms are closed, it’s not surprising that large numbers of college age students would be moving home. Including them with people in their late 20s muddies the waters.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
So, the increase was mostly driven by 18-24 year olds (both college-age as well as some new grads), who were already 2.4x more likely to live with their parents.
If so, this seems really obvious and that is was useless research.
"The analysis of recent trends and characteristics is based on the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
In particular, further in Pew's methodology section ("How we did this"), the authors note that the CPS counts all unmarried students in dorms as living with their parents. This is a pretty big caveat. However, this still indicates an shift of students living off-campus who moved back in with their parents.
Additionally:
"The Current Population Survey (CPS), also referred to as the household survey, is a monthly sample survey of 60,000 eligible households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The survey is conducted using a combination of live telephone and in-person interviews with household respondents."
So, the shift is driven by surveys, rather than generic assumptions.
That said, IMO, the value-add of this analysis is not the top-line number, but the relative shift (5% absolute increase _since February_).
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
I suppose if you made a category 'temporarily living at home', then you would also be able to track after Corona how many students remained living at home (which might be an indicator of economic damage)
Worse is that the above is largely true for most students wrapping up trade schools and 2-4yr degrees. I hope that people working on 8+ year degrees have the insider connections to help them find gainful work - but IDK how realistic that is.
This isn't some recent covid thing; this goes back to at least the 2008 crash.
I think it's a real problem for our future that there are now lots of adults who have never lived to see a functioning housing market with plentiful supply. Everyone under 30 thinks its normal that you have to save your salary for 25 years to afford a down payment on a home. It isn't.
Anyway, growth is unsustainable: if housing keeps being a good investment for long enough, sooner or later it becomes unaffordable.
I agree it's a real problem, and we may have to get creative looking for solutions.
Decrease in buying population and/or decrease in incomes of the buying population would result in lower prices.
Communal housing was the norm in much of the world, including USSR, and it’s only recently that China built housing for everyone to move into the cities.
At the end of the day, prices rise due to demand (and gentrification, or even more extreme, billionaires parking their $ in US real estate and not even living there).
There is lots of cheap housing in the USA, but no one wants to live there. Someone should start a tech hub in Detroit’s abandoned housing regions, it’s a bargain.
> Daniel Gilbert (born January 17, 1962) is an American billionaire businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is the cofounder of Quicken Loans and founder of Rock Ventures.[3]
Downtown, but to a larger extend Midtown and Corktown changed a lot. People want to live there again.
Probably due to lots of government funding, but Reaganomics has finally righted things back to feudalism.
Success!
Now at 35 I can't imagine it more readily, even if not quite yet. But even at 30 I chose to go abroad and spend four years in a different country, and wouldn't want to miss that experience.
Of course we can build more houses, but at what cost to environment...
Not everybody is living with their parents due to economic hardship. I could pay rent pretty much anywhere but chose to move in with my parents because I saw an opportunity (from WFH) to spend time with them + my dad is sick. And it's also nice that I'll save about $20-30k a year in living expenses, live in a less dysfunctional region than the Bay Area (though with different problems for sure), and have way more living space. I am pretty happy to not be beholden to the racket that is renting in a hot metro area.
Yes, it's only possible because of Covid, but it's not forced or a negative like these articles can make it seem. Anecdotally I know many other bay area/large metro area software people who have done the same thing.
My parents are awesome! And you only have so much time with them in this world -- they're in their 70s and 80s and I'm happy to have the flexibility to spend more time with them. I do make sure to get a covid test each time I visit, though. (currently visiting an aunt and uncle out-of-state, after a covid test and a 16 hour drive).
Looking back, I should have ran away at ~16, things would have been much better.
I moved out of my parents’ home when I was 16 and never looked back. My 16 year old isn’t likely to be leaving anytime soon. He spends his evenings with his family and drives a good bit of the dynamics (game nights, weekend agendas, etc). He simply likes it at home. I’m vigilant about the time at which he’s probably going to need to separate in ways he hasn’t signaled yet, but for now, we’re all happy to be together.
But he’s not 18 and in the job market and making an economic selection. But when the world is as crazy as it is now, maybe those who like their parents enough to return home are harbingers of something could that can come out of this — stronger familial connections. Certainly, my generation doesn’t seem to have it going backwards...
I'm on several Japanese dating sites. It's not uncommon to see people in their 40s and even 50s living at home. I have a friend in her mid 40s still living at home. It's common to see mom's (50s-60s) and daughters (20s-30s-40s) going out together. One of my closest friend's from Malaysia in is 40s, his older brother lives at home with parents, his wife, and their 10yr old son. It's normal.
I know in the USA the culture tells you "GET OUT!!! YOUR PARENTS SUCK!!! FREEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM!" and I'm sure I could name 100+ cultural references but that's hardly the norm for the world. And I gotta say, I'm kind of jealous of people who have no issues spending lots of time with their parents. I love mine dearly but it would be hard to live with them for some reason.
I suspect that 40s/50s in dating sites is biased datapoint.
My brother who now has kids lives with my parents. He works with my dad and they get along well. He’s now had like 2 rental properties on the side and probably has at-least 3X higher net worth than me.
So while I enjoy the freedom of being in another country alone, I sometimes do ponder how life would have been if I stayed with/near them. Our kids would have enjoyed spending time with grandparents for sure. My wife could use that help. Right now she is stay-at-home mom. If we had grandparents close by, she could work. Day care is just too far expensive to be worth it.
Staying with parents has a lot of benefits (esp with covid WFH thing) if you have good relationship with them.
IMHO Day care is one of the best investments a society can make, I would not like living in a political environment that makes it too expensive.
Those were called "squats" when I was young, that's where I ended up at 19. Although I wasn't trying to escape my parents at that point, I was planning on leeching off of them. I ran away for the first time when I was 14, by the time I was 19 free food and rent in the suburbs sounded pretty nice. My parents weren't having it.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line
This has been true for at least a thousand years. America was largely settled by people from this folkway.
The influence that this pattern, and the bans on cousin marriage (out to fifth cousins in some cases, but second cousin marriage was commonly forbidden), has had on what we sometimes call WEIRD people, is interesting, if a bit off topic.
At least in the early 20th century, multigenerational Irish, German and Italian immigrant households in New York were all fairly common, so I find it hard to square with what you're saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...
I attribute that to widely available "free" University education (women were equally represented in student populations, if not at 50%, at 45% for sure, though "citation missing") soon after the World War 2, housing availability, etc.
So the Hajnal line is trivial to disprove by just looking at numbers for a single country East of the line like Serbia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Serbia
Knowing some internal details like the fact that Kosovo probably had highest fertility in Serbia until it split off, the situation in 70s probably mirrored the one from countries West of the line.
The pattern Hajnal notices more likely corresponds to migration into cities (move from agriculture to industrialization and now services) and wider availability of education and employment to everyone, but in particular women (which happened in Communist Yugoslavia) and rising standards of living, rather than historical cultural traits as he claims in his paper (though I found only an abstract).
With more effort and closer look, I am sure that all of this could have been disputed even in 60s when the paper was published.
And interestingly, more recent data suggests that West of the line now has a higher fertility than the East in Europe.
Ten minutes is a very different level of acoustic and visual privacy from "same house."
I was excited by this statistic. If this becomes commonplace, it will carry less stigma, and hopefully happen more often where appropriate.
No one is saying people can't move out. All we're saying is that in most countries in the world, there is no stigma to not moving out. Some kids move out when they head out for college. Others move out when they get married and set up families. Others move stay together, and the grandparents help raise the kids.
All of these should be okay.
In the US, they're not. The reasons people are staying are economical, but the reasons most people want to move out are equally broken: image and social pressure. People living with parents in the US are perceived as losers.
COVID19 exasperates this problem. Since the only people moving back in with parents are doing so due to economic reasons, the messaging that sends becomes stronger. I don't mind more than half of 18-29 year olds living with parents. That's only occasionally a problem. I do mind more than half of 18-29 years old living with the ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL STIGMA of moving back in with parents. That's where the majority of the harm comes from.
(No, I'm not arguing there aren't abusive / dysfunctional / etc. families. It's a common. It's just not the majority case.)
"Involved" isn't the same as "coerced," US stereotypes to the contrary.
To get things out-of-the-way: All the data I've seen suggests that couples in such countries DO actually appear to have stronger relationships and people in relationships DO appear to like each other more (at least a few years in).
General analysis:
US: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of a Disney-style romance, with a soulmate, prince charming, and all that. Sometimes, that's even there up-front, but people change, and 10 or 20 years down the line, "soulmates" will usually be less compatible. At that point, people are hit with disappointment, conflict, and quite often, divorce. The expectation of potential divorce also gives less incentive to invest into the relationship too. That's especially true in times of crisis. If you're hit by a car, does your mate stick with you or move on? People need to hedge.
PI: Couples go into a relationship with the expectation of initially being different, but of needing to the work to make it work, since they're in it for life. They're not disappointed when reality doesn't look like Disney, and usually they work together to make things work out. Couples tend to grow together over time, rather than grow apart, which is a healthier dynamic. In crisis situations, couples can count on each other to have their backs, since if things go badly for your partner, they go badly for you and vice-versa. Plus, you'll be counting on them in 50 years, so if you're not there for them now...
Refs: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari.
But there is a more general aspect that parents can objectively evaluate compatibility and quality of your partner in a way that you can't. Again, it's worth noting there's a scale here. Do you inform your parents? Get advice? Ask permission? They pick, with your permission? With your advice? Entirely arranged? It's a spectrum.
That is not at all how things work in western cultures.
That’s not meant to be a judgement, we all met for dinner a few years later, they have kids - four generations staying together, they seem happy and every time he talks about her, his eyes still light up in a way that you can’t fake.
It's a win win win and anytime this is brought up the first thing people say is "Well I could never live with my parents! I had to get out of there" but honestly there's a lot worth tolerating when you're younger if it means that when you're older you have four more helping hands when you are in your early 20s, starting your careers, and having children.
Don’t get me wrong, if my parents weren’t able to take care of themselves, they would definitely move in with me. My parents are both in their late 70s, and independent, but I don’t see my dad living by himself with his hearing and eyesight going if something happened to my mom.
In the contemporary world, it’s no different than Tinder/OkC, just the CSS(HTML) is different but the dynamics are the same.
He went to India for two weeks and came back talking about marriage. He had never met or spoken to his now wife beforehand.
That doesn't sound normal.
They met during that time in India and married shortly thereafter.
And yes there are people who are over 18 and are subject to physical punishment.
Of course there can be complications, like the money you put in for the rent may be spent on some utterly stupid crap. That is what my dad does. He should save, god damn it!
But, how do you have a social life - let’s be honest a sex life - if you live with your parents and they do to? For most young men living in the west in normal times don’t women frown on men who still live with their parents?
My wife, son and I moved in with my parents to save money one summer when we were between homes - lease was up and our house was being built. I could work remotely and my wife worked for the school system. It was really awkward in our forties even though we all tried to make the best of it.
We both love our parents but we also like our privacy. When we do have your standard couple disagreements, the last thing we want is our parents being involved.
As somebody with a high school senior I am ready for my kid to enter the world. It’s not that I want to get rid of her but instead as a responsible parent I want to push in the controlled direction of accepting greater independence and responsibility. In putting that stress upon my child, which was a normal expectation 20 years ago, I am helping my child develop continued maturity well beyond her peers.
I also had the freedom of nobody knowing or caring where I went and how late I came home (=greater responsibility for planning my time).
But I understand what you mean - i had a childhood friend who went to a 2 years vocational school after highschool (during which he lived at home) and then enlisted in the army for 4-5 years (in a non-combat technical role). I suspect the army basically takes care of you when you live on base because afterwards he moved back home & I got the feeling he pretty much stayed stuck in a child role for years later (may be complicated by mental health issues).
I think never having had to really be completely responsible for himself held him back.
Many in industry and service sector who are ‘company men’ and never quit their first job until retirement also face the same problem. Double edged sword.
in other words, the objectivity has to come from someone who has been on the receiving end without having been part of the system.
For example: If I am Indian and I have an accent. Whether it’s understandable to Americans should be deemed by Americans. Not Indians.
If anything I am decidedly (perhaps obcessively) less conformist than most developers I have worked with BECAUSE of my military experience.
This really sounds more like a personal problem that you're projecting onto tens of millions of people. Perhaps "this generation" (whatever that means) has burnt bridges with their family because they offer nothing but baseless, judgmental platitudes about the demise of the youth?
Relax, friend. There is nothing new under the sun. The current generation isn't better or worse than those that came before. The world changes here and there, but most things stay the same. Don't fret so much about the future of civilization. Be present and let the rest unfold as it will.
I suppose here there is a distinction to be made between "never left" and "came back."
Though I guess often the "came back" turns more into "my parents live with us."
I don't think there's anything wrong with kids and parents living together long term, but I agree that there needs to be the forced maturation of having to deal with your own problems at some point in between.
It's the kids who are 25 and don't know how to open a bank account that are the worry.
I remember helping a 30 year old do laundry because they had never done it in their entire life.
Hey, you can figure out life as an adult even while living with your parents. Of course this does not mean spending your day in front of a PlayStation. Living with your parents in your 20's is a great money saver, and it's actually the norm outside the english speaking world. The only downside are decreased sexual opportunities, if you are in that sort of thing.
I live in one of them. English is my third language.
A good analogy might be a programmer. It's a night and day difference between being on a team where someone else does the hard stuff and just pushes dumb tasks your way, versus striking out on your own and having to figure everything out.
It so happens that this pattern is economically inefficient, and only in our inability to support it does its discontinuation serve as a negative economic indicator. American culture makes it an effective metric in the U.S. Where it's already common for children to live with their parents longer though, such as in India, the original choice could very likely be to stay, which makes the metric less useful.
Living at home stunts that development and everyone else is worse off because we don't get the benefits of what unique things that person(not their parents) could have contributed to the greater society.
My dad paid rent in Pasadena, put himself through a Cal State, and put a roof over my mother and sister's head by working at a gas station. He will be the first to tell you that simply isn't economically possible anymore.
I certainly was never able to do that either. I just moved out and rented a room in an area I could afford and worked from there. Just because your Dad had it really easy doesn't mean its become crazy difficult.
It does come across like you have a very high expectations about life because you happened to have very privileged parents. Most people in the US never had the advantages your father had and we get by just fine. Maybe we'll never be millionaires, but I think we'll both be okay.
I don't know what your personal life situation is at the moment, and I do apologize if you are on hard times. I know it's rough out there. I'm inferring from your comment that you are in the United States. Do you really think a shot at a rented roof over one's head, a college education from a state school, and a kid is asking for the moon?
I would encourage you to dig deeper into US history over the last 75 years. You might find some surprises.
Trust me, we'll be okay.
For example: my parents don't live on a farm, but their house is between a corn field and a forest. The only work in the vicinity is farm labor, local gov, or retail/service. I guess a remote job could be an option, but their only internet option is slow unreliable DSL (cuts out every 20-30 minutes, phone company unable to diagnose the issue).
The nearest city is about a half hour away. It's relatively small, but does have some opportunities. No tech scene though, of course. There are a couple of small factories remaining, some banking/insurance business, hospitals and medical, and more retail/service.
My dad was an electrical engineer, and he had to commute 1+ hours each way to get to his office. Even if I was willing to commute that far, that wouldn't be an option since that company left long ago.
My parents do have an absolutely gorgeous view of a scenic rural valley outside their front windows though, and 100s of acres of forest behind them.
As for your DSL I too had the same problem and I found stability after I switched to Netgear from Linksys. Have you looked at that?
I disable all the built in Wi-Fi and just use the modem and use a separate Wi-Fi hw so that I don't tax the modem hw.
Leaving the family is good for many reasons. It teaches you to be independent, to live on your own, to handle your responsibilities, manage your earnings, i.e. to become an actual adult instead of relying on your family to cook, wash and do all/most of the chores for you. You can't get ready for a family and provide for them if you can't do these kind of things on your own in the first place. It's all about building experience and self-reliance.
Of course every family is different, but in society at large having kids staying longer with their parents definitely delay actual adulthood.
The other absurd expectation is that laundry and cooking requires some special figuring out. Like, this all primary sounds like an issue of you all parent 7-16 years old more then anything else.
2) my parents have an extremely conservative view on dating that I don’t share.
3) my mother verbally abused me most mornings and I would rather be homeless than return to that
4) my parents live in an extremely rural place that makes socializing a challenge.
I lived at home until I got married at 27. Best decision I ever made.
I think I can summarize it as: it's never been ideal, but we always made it work, and I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world. if the worst problem I had to solve was not enough privacy with my gf/wife, then I was doing pretty good on a global scale.
I share the same attitude and it’s served me well - you never know when life will hand you a bad card. Our 19 month old son at the time (6 years ago) got sick - he developed type 1 diabetes. It wasn’t easy to accept but then you look at the kids with more serious conditions in the waiting room at the pediatric endocrinologist’s office and realize that type 1 diabetes is manageable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a disease that never takes a break. In 6 years we’ve probably left him in the care of someone else (my parents) maybe a handful of times because he can’t self manage yet. But we make the best of it. Yes it would be nice to be able to go on date nights once in a while, but the times we’ve tried usually ended in multiple phone calls or constant texting. In the end it just means we spend more time with our kids. Someday they’ll move out/away and we’ll have more time alone than we like.
For a lot of dating, you are not at home anyway, we used to go to parks, concerts and such to spend time together.
I don’t think I’d change a thing in hindsight.
I would think you can pay that loan off in a couple years working in SV. But with all the talk of forgiveness maybe you should hold off a bit...
Of course, it must be said that one doesn't get a PhD because it's the financially smart choice.
My sentiment has not changed.
The average size of new single family homes in the built in 2019 in the U.S. is around 2,500 sq. feet.
ref:https://www.homes.com/blog/2018/10/states-with-the-largest-a...
What we have is a smaller number of super-homes, being built for a limited clientele. That doesn't translate into a larger home available to most Americans.
I believe what best reflects our actual choices is our actual choices - which is average home size.
[1]https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts
https://www.curbed.com/2020/3/10/21168519/homes-for-sale-ame...
I live in the burbs of Atlanta. We purposefully got the smallest floor plan the builder had. We still ended up with 3100 square feet. At the time in 2016, the builder only required 5% down - $16,500. We even got some of that back at closing because an FHA loan was only 3.5%. We pay less than $2200/month all in.
I don’t think many people on the west coast realize how relatively affordable houses are in the burbs of most major non west coast cities.
In Atlanta, your average SaaS CRUD developer can easily afford that making low $100K which they can make with five or six years experience.
On the other hand your average couple making $60K each - two teachers could afford that.
Average home size and home size per person in a household is much larger in the US than in other countries: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house. Not saying we should all live in Hong Kong coffin homes but even with, say, Germany the discrepancy is quite noticeable.
In other words, an 18 year old would have to save $5K a year for 12 years simply to have the deposit.
The national average for house prices is not too different from this scenario.
My parents had a nice suburban house, that went from 300,000 Danish KR to a little over 3 million in the years they owned it. Which is about the maximum my generation can secure in loans on regular jobs. There is now way it’ll increase to 18million though.
http://www.sears-homes.com/2012/11/yes-virginia-sears-homes-...
I am an Indian and here (I'd say most of Asia) we have a very strong culture of staying with parents, living together and everything. I mean unless absolutely required , kids do not live separately.
What are your views on it, as a westerner? Except the financial angle.
There’s more stigma for living with your parents than not. I guess if you own the house and your parents live with you, that’s fine. But if it’s their house, generally speaking after college “it’s time to leave the nest!“
Staying with parents would be common here too in earlier times. A lot of western individualism grew as society transformed economically and technologically.
As people got a lot fewer children, and children perhaps had to move further for work. Government had to start building out retirement homes as not all old people would have children who could take care of them.
With more prosperity people also often want more independence and over time welfare services get better built out to help both the young and old.
Over time your culture adapts to it. My mom would definitely not want to have me hanging around for long periods of time. But she likes that I bring the family over and stay in weekends and holidays.
I know from Indian friends that you seem way more comfortable about being around a lot of people. As a Norwegian I hate being around too much people for a long time. I need plenty of alone time to feel well.
But it can be too much. This COVID19 pandemic has been hard. I miss people from work. My family. Just walking in a crowded street.
Yes, people will almost always choose freedom if they can afford it (including parents who can take of themselves). Few would willingly choose to compromise unless they have to, which is shown in data. The super rich Indian kids I know live in flats in big cities by themselves.
Now that I have kids I can certainly see the appeal of living with or close to parents.
I think having a clean break around 18 years old is a good idea for many people. See what it takes to be self-sufficient when you have lots of energy and no kids.
The first thing our people lost here was the language. Amazingly, Tamillians speak English in the fast-merged way Tamil is spoken but they speak absolutely no Tamil. Same goes for north-Indian language speakers. Now even the accent is being lost as the most superior accent in this country is obviously the one maintained by the ruling class (white).
Then, clothing. Our traditional dress became considered inferior for everyday use and only gaudy dress for weddings and other functions remain.
Now, my grandmother who looked after her father in law and changed his diapers on his deathbed is completely abandoned. She is so distraught because the generation of my parents is the first to break a pact that I assume goes back millennia in Indian culture; that children will care directly for elders (no old age homes).
It’s interesting however that the social-religious aspects of Indian culture from the late 1800s have been quite meticulously maintained, although there is little impetus for philosophy.
It is, however, still uncommon for Indian unmarried children to live with anyone other than parents.
The first time I visited India I was completely abhorred, for many reasons. I was extremely sure that I am not an Indian. But after living there for many years I can say that most differences between the west and India in this regard comes from the importance in India of the group over the individual, a situation which (seems to me) to be reversed in the west. And there are deep cultural values which exist in me to this day which emanate from India and I have been lucky enough to realise.
I have acknowledged that a large part of my personal life will be reconciling these two men that meet within me, the westerner and the Indian...
This was due to economic circumstances. Given economic freedom by higher incomes, especially for women enabling them to be independent, makes all of those group over individual cultures change to individual over group.
I see this in kids of Indians that moved from India to the US/UK and the kids still in India. If you’re financially able to you, you live in your own home. Parents might be nearby, or maybe move in once they need help due to their medical issues.
Southern Europeans (Spanish, Italian, Greeks) and East-Europeans are very family oriented, and living with parents is seen as normal, expected and beneficial.
Check this interesting reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/giznbo/in_your_c...
I suspect that this process hsa a lot to do with society changing over time, and I don't think the overlap between traditional cultures and living at home is accidental. When parents maintain supervision and control over their children for their whole lives, rather than just the first 18 years, there is less room for the generation to drift into different norms.
It could be a cultural thing but I don’t think anybody in the world can love me as much as they do (possibly my wife and my sisters). Of course we fight at times but that’s just like any other relationship.
I feel pity and anger when I hear of abusive parents here. If you didn’t want a kid you shouldn’t have had one.
'For those who were working remotely, this was likely a short-term move so that they weren’t alone in their apartments when social distancing measures were put in place,' Cohen said.
'But, what was expected by many to last two to four weeks, has now extended for nearly six months.'
Few companies will talk to you without a job history. Of those, ~0 will hire you, if you lack average-to-above-average interview talent.
For the vast bulk of entry level jobs, hiring is done via web portal. Once you've applied, you've applied. Try again a year later and they'll tell you that you've already applied[1].
In most of the US, you can't reliably get to work without a vehicle. You can't afford a vehicle (+ $300/mo insurance) without saving up months worth of income.
If you have any physical limitation of any kind, just keep multipling the above difficulties, until you reach your actual reality.
If you have a family member with limitations (eg: mental illness), you probably ought to multiply as well.
[1] This held solid from well before 2010 until a few years ago. I've heard some portals now allow reapplying, eventually. I haven't confirmed that tho.
We're still in the house they grew up in so it's really so familiar that it's not something my wife and I even think as being out of normal. It really doesn't make any sense for them to be paying rent and we've got a pretty sweet setup for hunkering down during this pandemic. We're surrounded by hard core "preppers" here.
But really, it was pretty easy to see this kind of thing coming. It's not like we're in a full blown disaster of epic movie proportions but I think it's fair to say that it's been a lot easier on rural areas and families like where we live than most cities.
We still can't know for sure but things might get tighter before they loosen up and that is when "family" becomes important. It nice to have a "family home" that we can all count on.
We've seen a surge in "tiny homes" being designed but still not built at a rate that's made a dent. And what we really need are smaller family homes that are efficient and comfortable.
There are a lot of "Pre-fab" homes here where we live. Those are pretty cost effective but they still don't have the appeal of craftsmen built home.
There are some really cool old homes built out of rock here (Ozark Giraffe House). Most are pretty small by today's standards but they're great starter homes for young couples.
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...
Many of my own relatives in India considered it sad that I had moved out before marriage and that We didn’t get a home in the same neighbourhood as my parents after marrying.
These kinds of arrangements would have driven me bananas (and would if me own kid had to do it) but it’s pretty common.
It's only a change in environment that can knock that down a bit, but exponential growth still wins. Birth control cut the birth rate for most people, but not for all. The resistant sub-populations are still on exponential growth even as the other sub-populations go through a population crash.
It's as certain as math. Exponential growth wins.
(I was born in '76 so sorta gen-x)
This is, roughly, the modern version of the american dream...
Be born to a middle class family living in the suburbs of a major city. Go to k-8 and maybe learn a bit (it's mostly highly structured childcare with learning sprinkled on top). Go to high school, get good enough grades that you get into AP classes. Get enough AP credit that you enter the college of your choice with plenty of headroom for a 4-year degree. Then take 5 years to do a 4-year degree. Learn how to live alone and be responsible while at college. Graduate, get a nice entry-level job through connections you made at university making ~1.5x median household income for your city. Get married. Climb the corporate ladder and have kids. And so on.
Obviously this is extremely specific, assumes a lot of privilege, and so on. But this is the path that will have your snooty aunt having nothing bad to say about you at Thanksgiving.
The important think to note is that, basically after leaving high school, the above plan has you living outside your parents house (even if you're still not totally independent). Moving back home after college is a pretty big step down in freedom (don't have to sneak your dates out the back door before your parents wake up, among many many other things).
So, from two different sides: one, people used to dorm or college living won't want to downgrade back to being under their parents' thumb to any degree. And two, being back in your parents' house post-high-school indicates a lot of things to potential partners and maybe even employers (though obviously decent ones won't ask or care..... but lots of employers aren't decent).
It's totally just a cultural thing. I think it will probably shift fast here in the next 20 years though. There are a lot of people in the 23-29 age range who have found the american dream I described above to be a pretty shitty deal that isn't attainable for a large portion of the population.
That doesn't mean Ivy League school or owning a house in the Bay Area.
Plenty of people are living the American dream working jobs paying $75k, living in a house worth $200k, kids going to public school and two used cars in the driveway.
If you can't afford that lifestyle then just borrow more, even students with no income can get credit. Can't get a loan? Then you must be some kind of degenerate who deserves their poverty.
It takes quite a bit of fortitude to ignore all that and be satisfied with the ordinary. You can see by the state of most peoples finances that the majority haven't got that.
It takes quite a bit of income to feel secure enough in the face of increased volatility in the labor markets and increase in prices of healthcare/education/real state in growing economic areas/taxes.
The years of 50 to 65 are especially dangerous for Americans as they are much likelier to have a medical emergency, much likelier to not have a job providing decent health insurance (or much likelier to lose it), and they have some savings with which will cause them to not quality for government aid, but will get wiped out if they have a health emergency.
65 is when they get to the finish line and get taxpayer funded emergency hospital healthcare (the most expensive, debilitating cost for Americans). I expect the age to move up from 65 to 70 as I get older, just like Social Security retirement income age moves up.
The second biggest risk for many Americans is if they have complications during birth which cause one or both spouses to lose their ability to go to work, since 40+ states have no parental leave laws. A woman can go on bed rest two months before giving birth, and be fired if she can’t be back to work within 1 month after giving birth since federal law only provides for 90 days of total leave.
Median household income in the Midwest states is 40-60k. A 4-year (in-demand... engineering etc) degree gets you 60-80k starting. Save up for 2 < x < ? years to get a 3/4-bed house 30 mins from your job near good schools.
Tbh housing in the midwest is still not super cheap if you want to be within 45 mins of jobs/stuff. You really have to put yourself out of commuting distance to get to property that's really superciliously cheap.
Teenagers seem to get up to mischief in that department just fine. Don't see what would change about it as they got older.
If you're staying with them because of choice and you have a good job, just get a hotel room or go stay at a B&B for the weekend or something.
If you're staying with them because you're broke, you just don't have sex, unless you're the type who can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.
The implication was that if you have a decent job and live at home you will generally be able to arrange something because of your access to cash. So you can bankroll whatever solution will work with your s/o or casual encounter.
If you're broke and living at home, it may be more difficult to enter a relationship or have a more casual encounter to begin with, let alone pay for a bunch of hotel rooms or whatever.
So the first person can go at it all the time like you said, but the second person is more limited.
I think this answer still implies you're having sex maybe once or twice a month. Hotels aren't cheap and if you're paying for them more than a few times a month, why even live at home?
For many American couples - having sex anywhere from once a week to multiple times a day are all fairly common.
From this Huffpo article they're throwing out $1,234.43 as the median rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in a selection of American cities (kid gloves to begin with - let's tackle SF rent later).
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heres-what-an-average-apa_b_1...
So what are hotel rooms going to run you? I just grabbed something off of Expedia in SF for Wednesday night. Hotel Abri in Union Square $106. Seems not too sketchy, and not too pricey. If your s/o is a little adventurous there's always $60/night Motel 6 (bedbugs notwithstanding).
So, say you're having sex two nights per week (sure, not all the time, but you're living with your parents so you're going to have to dial that libido back a little bit - listening to them bug you about grandkids should do the trick).
Let's estimate that with tax and everything you're blowing $250/week on hotel rooms. That's $1,000/month.
Honestly you're right on that one. Cheaper to just get an apartment.
But wait! What if you're in SF? Median rent even with the 'rona is $3,280. $3,280/$110 ~ 30x/month.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/san-francisco-one-bedroom-re...
So, that's motel sex like 30 times per month. If you're under that, it's just money in the bank. So, maybe you and your s/o could think of it as every time you don't have sex you're putting money away for a down payment? I'm sure that won't have any weird long-term repercussions for your relationship.
That's one-sided savings. Say your s/o is pooling cash as well with a similar fixed cost structure. Multiply savings by two.
I think people who live with their parents probably just aren't having much sex unless their respective partners don't live with their parents. And - honestly - that's about what I've heard from people I know who live with their parents. They might get laid but it's not happening at their parent's place much at all.
Btw, there is no cost saving in this equation - the children are merely taking advantage of their parent's wealth. Seems the privileged and celibate will reap some weird financial rewards at some point... at the cost of not getting laid and having a limited set of partners.
"Yet somehow the several generation between you and the boomers managed to make a go of it; how did that happen?"
This argument makes zero sense. Was going to make a reply, but forget it
Zoomers might be ok, though, if they keep their heads down and don't take student debt. The Boomers won't last forever.
The young people have been advertised to all their lives, and what would be considered luxury goods (like an iphone X) is no longer considered luxury, but a required accessory. What was considered, in the last half-century, a luxury food is no longer considered luxury today. Just having bread and staples isn't enough. And i don't blame them - being bombarded from a young age with advertising and media messages telling you that your life "should" have such and such, is making it harder and harder to live frugally.
His rent, utilities, car note and car insurance is around $1800 all in. At least until he is 26 and can stay on my insurance.
The median household income in the US is only around $63000.
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...
That average is a static snapshot. You would assume that as a person or especially a couple get older, they would move up the income ladder.
The whole point of the conversation is that younger generations will not be like the ones retiring now
Disclosure : I grew up in a multi generational joint family with grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and cousins.
That sounds miserable, TBH
Altogether 6 adults and 7 kids. It was fine and if we lived in 3 adjacent houses that would have probably only been better IMO.
Doesn’t it help people save money?
Our national identity revolves around the idea of liberty and freedom, and we mythologize the self-made person.
See the current debate over firearms. Same deal. Individual liberty versus the good of the group.
It's not rational, but it is who we are.
Compared to pre-Trump times talking to an US citizen feels either like to talking to someone in a delusional cult or like talking to someone who realized the american dream they told themselves existed is utter nonsense with no bearing in reality whatsoever.