--- title: A First in the Modern Era, More Young Americans Live with Parents Than With Lovers description: But the reasons why don’t fit a simple pattern authors: - name: Denver Nicks url: https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/ at_money_since: 2015 articles: 60 covers: - Housing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit Cards - Economy and Politics - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Personal Finance - Pets - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://x.com/DenverNicks - https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932 former_staff: true published: '2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z' modified: '2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z' section: Housing tags: - Co-habitation - Family - home - household - Living - Marriage - Pew - pubdesk - roommates - society word_count: 366 canonical: https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Family laughing watching TV on living room sofa](https://img.money.com/2016/05/gettyimages-595347369.jpg) For the first time in more than 130 years, more American young adults are living with their parents than with a romantic partner, marking a significant [shift](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2016/05/2016-05-24_living-arrangemnet-final.pdf) in societal trends as financial prospects for young men have worsened while marriage has been in decline overall. As of 2014, according to a report from the Pew Research Center out Tuesday using data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, 32.1% of Americans ages 18 to 34 were living with one or both parents, compared to 31.6% living with a spouse or partner, the first time since 1880 that more young Americans lived with mom and dad than with a partner. The change is less the result of an increase in young Americans living with their parents, which peaked in 1940 at 35%, than of the decline in marriage overall. In 1960, the portion of young Americans living with a partner peaked at 62%, the same year the share living with parents bottomed out at about 20%. Living with mom and dad has increased more or less steadily ever since, while living with a romantic partner has plummeted, as young people delay marriage or forgo the institution altogether. Pew [estimates](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-never-married/) that as many as a quarter of young adults today will never marry, a shift owing to numerous factors, including adults choosing to marry later in life, changing public attitudes, and a decline in economic prospects among young men, for whom employment peaked around 1960 at 84% and fell to 71% by 2014. That’s a stark contrast to young women, for whom economic prospects have improved in the last 50 years. Inflation-adjusted earnings for young men have also fallen substantially since 1970, leading more of them to live with parents rather than a spouse. Another cause of the shift in living arrangements among young Americans is a rise in other non-traditional living arrangements for the unattached, like living alone or with a non-parent relative (this includes being a single parent), which grew substantially in the last 20 years, and living with roommates in a group setting, which hit a nadir in the middle of the last century but as of 2014 has risen to 22%, near its historical peak. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Housing", "item": "https://money.com/housing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Homeowners", "item": "https://money.com/homeowners/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "A First in the Modern Era, More Young Americans Live with Parents Than With Lovers" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/", "name": "A First in the Modern Era, More Young Americans Live with Parents Than With Lovers", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "A First in the Modern Era, More Young Americans Live with Parents Than With Lovers", "articleSection": "Housing", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/05/gettyimages-595347369.jpg", "width": 2121, "height": 1414, "caption": "Family laughing watching TV on living room sofa" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Denver Nicks", "url": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/denver-nicks/#author", "image": "https://img.money.com/2012/09/09_1165862081.jpg?quality=85&w=640&h=640&crop=1", "sameAs": [ "https://x.com/DenverNicks", "https://plus.google.com/105122198911201917932" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z", "description": "But the reasons why don’t fit a simple pattern", "abstract": "But the reasons why don’t fit a simple pattern", "@id": "https://money.com/young-people-living-with-parents-more/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2016-05-24T16:10:29.000Z", "wordCount": 366, "keywords": [ "Co-habitation", "Family", "home", "household", "Living", "Marriage", "Pew", "pubdesk", "roommates", "society" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Housing in the United States", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_the_United_States" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Owner-occupancy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owner-occupancy" ] } ] } ] } ```