Young adults lose the chance to live independently as housing, wages and insecure employment combine to trap more people in their 20s at home.
Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, commissioned in part for the BBC, shows the share of 25-year-olds living with their parents rose from 25% in the 1990s to 42% today. The IFS finds co-residence among people in their 20s and 30s has climbed by more than a third over the past two decades. Britain’s rate remains well below Italy and Spain, but the trend points toward a southern European pattern without the cultural norms that make multigenerational living feel customary.
The causes are concrete. Employment among 25-year-olds has fallen for both women and men, and real earnings have barely advanced beyond levels seen roughly two decades ago. Home ownership at 25 has plunged from 43% in the mid-1980s to 15% today. The IFS says shifting demographics might have reduced household sharing, yet instead the declining affordability of housing has driven co-residence up.
Living with parents often shields young adults from rent, but it also reduces privacy and autonomy, and transfers additional costs to parents. Wealthy families convert savings into independence, about 15% of the richest fifth gave or lent money to their children in 2018-20, compared with under 5% among the poorest fifth. That pattern preserves advantages in wealth and the very ability to establish an independent life.
Personal testimony captures the social stakes. A 26-year-old who returned to his parents told BBC’s Today programme, "I'm not going to bring a girl back to my parents' house. So it would have 100% affected that part of my life, which does get me low." The IFS evidence and such accounts suggest this is not a matter of preference but one of shrinking options.
The editorial prescription in the source urges a social democratic response, expanding social housing, improving wages and job security, and reorienting taxation away from labour and toward rent extraction. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is quoted saying, "If you don't give people a good home, what chance have they got of having a good life?" He also pledged what he called "the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period."
Absent bold policy shifts, the government will continue subsidising the social and economic consequences of these trends while leaving root causes in place. The result risks turning a generation’s 20s into a prolonged, dependent limbo with lasting impacts on equality and opportunity.
