Counting Boomerang Kids

For the past few years, the media has been obsessing about the growing share of adult children who live with their parents. The latest example is the New York Time's article, "It's Official: The Boomerang Kids Won't Leave." The Times is correct. Adult children are more likely to live with their parents now than a decade ago, but the evidence is harder to suss out than you might think.

One way to investigate the boomerang phenomenon is to look at the living arrangements of young adults. According to the Census Bureau, fully 47 percent of 20-to-24-year-olds lived with their parents in 2013—up from 42 percent a decade earlier in 2003. Sounds like proof, right? Not exactly, because college students who live in dorms are categorized by the Census Bureau as living with their parents. The rise in college enrollment goes a long way toward explaining the uptick among 20-to-24-year-olds. More convincing is the rise in the next older age group, where 19 percent of 25-to-29-year-olds lived with their parents in 2013—up from 15 percent in 2003. Among 30-to-34-year-olds, the share climbed from 7 to 9 percent during those years. Even among 35-to-39-year-olds, the figure grew from 5 to 6 percent.

Another way to investigate the boomerang phenomenon is to count households with children. Surprisingly, the percentage of households that include children of the householder is lower today than it was a decade ago, the share falling from 42 to 39 percent between 2003 and 2013. But the decline is due to the ongoing baby bust. Households headed by people under age 35 are less likely to have children in their home (43 percent) than their counterparts a decade earlier (47 percent). In contrast, households headed by people aged 50 to 64 are more likely to have children at home (33 percent) than their counterparts a decade earlier (31 percent). Although it's not a big increase, there is some increase in "boomerang kids."