money Confirmed: Millennial men live with their parents more than other generations
More millennial men are choosing to live with their parents compared to previous generations, according to an analysis by J.P. Morgan.
Using Census microdata, the bank’s researchers found that the millennial generation — which is “far from monolithic” and is broken down into early, middle and late stages — has been “reaching lifecycle milestones later in life than prior generations,” and in particular, has been moving into their own households at a “slower pace than their predecessors.”
The difference in behavior compared to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers is most pronounced with middle millennial men (born between 1986 and 1990) and is deepened with late millennials (born 1991 to 1995).
In other words, “early” and “middle” millennial men born between 1986 and 1995 were increasingly choosing to live with their parents — for various reasons — as compared to previous generations.
12.7% of millennials live with their mothers
Overall, according to Zillow, more than 14 million “early” and “middle” millennials nationwide live with their mothers in particular — up from 12.7% in 2000 to 21.9% this year.
That means 14.3 million adults (both men and women) aged between 23 and 27 live with their mothers, which is “not too far off from the number of children under age five who do the same” at 18.3 million, noted Zillow.
“The main reason is that they are marrying later, but a second important reason is that they are staying in education longer,” Clark University Psychology Professor Jeffrey Arnett told Yahoo Finance. “Longer education means a delay in when they are working full-time and making enough money to live on their own.
Only 7.7% of the population had a college degree in 1960, versus 35% in 2018 according to Statista. In 2017, Americans were attending 13.4 years of schooling, which was up from 12.3 in 1990.
And the more time that a person spent on education — especially higher education — meant more debt. Hence the average millennial is now saddled with an average of $390 in monthly student loan repayments for years, which impedes their ability to reach major life milestones such as buying their own home.
Arnett does not see this as necessarily a negative trend.
“My research shows that it's often a memorably nice period for both parents and children!” he added. “They get to know each other as fellow grown-ups, without all the travails of childhood and adolescence, and they usually both really enjoy that experience. They both recognize, too, that it's likely to end soon and unlikely ever to occur again.”
Millennial men and 132 hours of leisure
Meanwhile, another study revealed that early millennial men — aged 21 to 30 in particular — exhibited a “larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women,” due to them playing video games and “other recreational computer activities.”
The study — which was first published in 2017 and analyzed labor data and the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey — found that over the years, millennial men had increased the number of hours they dedicated to leisure by roughly the same number of hours they lost, which was 132 hours, and three-quarters of that time was spent on “gaming and other computer leisure activities, significantly more than did women or older men.”
While the group’s leisure time only expanded by 4% from 2004 to 2015, “the number of recreational computing hours jumped 45%, or more than five times as much as projected.”
Aarthi is a writer for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.
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