The Double Up Phenomena – The Kids Leave Home, and Come Back

No Spare Bedroom is Safe

As The Great Recession, The Great Stall, The Jobless Recovery or whatever name is put on the current economic conditions continues. The “move back home” movement continues to gain momentum.  One of the more disturbing statistics of current economics is the number of households where “doubling up” has occurred.

These “doubled-up” households are defined as those that include at least one “additional” adult – in other words, a person 18 or older who is not enrolled in school and is not the householder, spouse or cohabiting partner of the householder.

As one might imagine, the number of doubled up households has risen, and now there is hard data to support the intuition.

the number and share of doubled-up households and adults sharing households across the country increased over the course of the recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. In spring 2007, there were 19.7 million doubled-up households, amounting to 17.0 percent of all households. Four years later, in spring 2011, the number of such households had climbed to 21.8 million, or 18.3 percent.

All in all, 61.7 million adults, or 27.7 percent, were doubled-up in 2007, rising to 69.2 million, or 30.0 percent, in 2011.

That is correct, close to one in five households had a non-spousal adult living in it, and 30% of adults lived in such a household.  Young adults are the most affected.

Young adults were especially hard-hit, with 5.9 million people ages 25 to 34 living in their parents’ household in 2011, up from 4.7 million before the recession. That left 14.2 percent of young adults living in their parents’ households in March 2011, up more than two percentage points over the period.

The “why” is equally obvious.  Money.  Absent moving in these young people would be poor.

These young adults who lived with their parents had an official poverty rate of only 8.4 percent, since the income of their entire family is compared with the poverty threshold. If their poverty status were determined by their own income, 45.3 percent would have had income falling below the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65.

 It may well be that a permanent change is taking place in American demographics.  The "empty nest" concept may be disappearing.  Whether or not this is good or bad, it is happening to a larger and larger extent.  Of course, if Social Security and Medicare are cut, children may find they  have a new part time job, taking care of aged parents who cannot support themselves.

Exactly how the Conservative policy of eliminating the Estate Tax or cutting the Corporate Income Tax or preserving tax cuts for the wealthy will cause Junior or Ms. Junior to move out has never been adequately explained by Conservatives.