Nearly a third of young men live with their parents

Nearly a third of men and a fifth of women aged 20 to 34 live with their parents, the Office for National Statistics reports.

Figures published in the annual ONS ‘state of the nation' report Social Trends show that, in the second quarter of 2008, 29 per cent of 20 to 34-year-old men and 18 per cent of women of the same age lived with their parents. This equated to around 1.8 million men and 1.1 million women.

Social Trends, which this year takes the theme of households, families and children, also shows that the greatest proportion of this age group living with their parents was aged 20 to 24. In 2008 more than half (52 per cent) of men aged 20 to 24 and more than a third (37 per cent) of women lived with their parents.

Since 2001, the number of 20 to 34-year-olds living at the parental home has increased by nearly 300,000. In 2001, the proportion of young adults living at home stood at 27 per cent of 20 to 34-year-old men and 15 per cent of women in the same age group.

Part of the reason for the increase in the number of young people living with their parents may be that more young adults are continuing their studies after compulsory education.

Over the past four decades the number of students in higher education in the UK has quadrupled, rising from 621,000 in 1970/71 to more than 2.5 million in 2006/07.

Another factor may be that the unemployment rate is higher for people aged 16 to 24 than for older people.

In the second quarter of 2008, 20 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK with dependent children and 13 per cent without dependent children were unemployed. This compares with 6 per cent of people with dependent children and 4 per cent of people without dependent children aged 25 to 34 and 3 per cent of people with and without dependent children aged between 50 and state pension age.

According to a Eurobarometer survey in 2007, the most common reasons given by young adults in Europe for why young people live with their parents were that they couldn't afford to move out or that there wasn't enough affordable housing available.

Around four in ten (38 per cent) people in the UK aged 15 to 30 believed that the main reason young adults lived with their parents was because they couldn't afford to move out and around four in ten (44 per cent) felt it was because of a lack of affordable housing.

For the EU-27 countries as a whole, a higher proportion of respondents (44 per cent) believed young adults couldn't afford to move out than in the UK but a smaller proportion (28 per cent) felt there was a lack of affordable housing.

Around one in eight (12 per cent) 15 to 30-year-olds in the UK felt the main reason young adults stayed at home was because they wanted the comforts at home without the responsibilities. In the EU- 27 countries as a whole this figure was around one in six (16 per cent).