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Comment by Tarsul | Hacker News Reader

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-... edit: i see the title has already been corrected, HN is great :)

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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.

> Question: How many americans have reached 18 since february?

Isn't that mostly canceled out by all the americans reaching 30?

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.

But if it wasn't canceled out by something then this number would be rising forever, and that something ought to be people between 18 and 30 moving out, and if you suppose that most people planning to move out have postponed their plans due to COVID, then the situation doesn't look that grim.

That’s a fair hypothesis, which would result in a different interpretation of what the overall trend means. I was narrowly speaking to the discussion on the cohort age boundary, which is a valid observation from my perspective.

Wouldn't you assume the age-in and age-out are quite similar?

Why would you lean towards assuming it differs by such an astounding amount over a relatively short time period?

The numbers I used are roughly derived (I rounded to the nearest quarter for simplicity of example) from the top-level poster's Pew link [0]. Splitting the 18-29 year old cohort, 18-24 year olds increase from 63 to 71%, while 25-29 year olds increased from 26 to 28%.

Pretty much, there seems to be a natural gradient pre-existing, where the age-in group seems to have a much greater natural affinity to be living with their parents even prior to the pandemic. We can all probably generate reasonable hypotheses for that, but that's the root of the mathematical assumptions.

[0] Here's a re-link of what I'm referencing: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...

Maybe, but it would change the story from “The pandemic has pushed 2,6M young Americans to move in with their parents” to “The pandemic has kept 2,6M young Americans to stay with their parents”.

I would think that the number of people turning 18 would be offset by the number of 29 year-olds living with their parents that turned 30 in the same time.

Nope. Right now is a time where 18 year olds are less likely to move out. Meanwhile most 29 year olds would've moved out already before now

Thank you.

Also, given that colleges shut down and people had to leave dorm rooms, it very surprising that college-aged people needed a low-cost alternative housing situation? Especially one that could quickly be found?

I don't think so.

Shutting down dorms seems like a stupid idea, as they are both less likely to become ill, and hopefully better educated/informed and thus less likely to spread the virus.

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.

The point is that it's now a majority.

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