Share of young adults still living with their parents at the highest level since 1940.
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) July 30, 2024
The twist is in 1940 they lived at home by choice.
Today they live at home because one-bedrooms cost 60 hours a week packing groceries. pic.twitter.com/RSLdpPdgRD
The share of young adults still living with their parents just hit the highest level since 1940. Of course, 1940 they lived at home because they were saving themselves for a good husband. Today, they live at home because rat infested one bedrooms cost 60 hours a week packing groceries. It is getting worse fast. At age 25, 14% of Silent Generations lived at home. It was 15% for Boomers, 20% for Gen X, 27% for millennials, and now it is 30% of Gen Z. Take it all together, young adults living at home went from 7% in 1970 to 17% today and rising fast at two and 1/2 times. Note that in 1970, most young adult living at home could actually afford to move out, about 60%; today, that's 18%. The other 82 are stuck it's interesting because adults forced to live with their parents is yet another data point in the most important economic question today are we still getting richer or have they finally killed the golden goose that delivered Rising income generation after generation since roundabout 1789 in other words did socialism finally break the camel's back on that metric apparently we've gone backwards since 1970. So what happened in 1970? Richard Nixon, namely the bipartisan Washington spending orgy "Guns and butter" they called it for the welfare superstate paired with the Vietnam War. That orgy led to a devaluation of the dollar they spent too many into existence, which led to Nixon to "temporarily ending gold convertibility" on August 15th 1971 called "the Nixon shock," and yes, temporary in government does mean forever. At that point, it was off to the inflation races and the debt races. In recent videos, I've talked about how the inflation debt drove income inequality, pumping up the assets of the rich and leaving the plebs with nothing but inflation. One consequence apparently is millions who cannot afford to live on their own until age 35, an age where their parents already had three kids in a house they owned while they cannot even afford to rent . . . in case we wonder why nobody's having kids. Mish Shedlock dug into the numbers to see what's driving it. For one, incomes have been falling so since 2000. The median real income for young adults has dropped by 10%, while rent has soared since COVID-19 by 25%. According to official numbers, the upshot is that just 18% of young adults living at home can actually afford to move out. Even those with college degrees at this point are forced to live at home, so 1 in 8, which is double the rate, partly because of six figures. But even without student loan payments, the percentage of college grads who can afford to rent their own place is at a record low. In short, the Golden Goose is on life support whether or not you went to college.
As bad as Central Banking is for the country, the inflation, the boom-bust recessions, the bank bailouts, it is catastrophic for the young who are fleeced to pump the bags of elderly millionaires. A few months ago, I quoted Professor Scott Galloway's rant on how young voters are pissed off about being poor and are ready to burn it all down. Unfortunately, very few of them connect the dots that their tormentors are in Washington and that they themselves have been useful idiots who made it happen.
