The U.S. Department of Education report confirmed that, if you are tired of living with Mom and Dad, then do your homework and stay in school. According to the survey titled "Where Are They Now," education makes a difference: generally those with more schooling were less likely to be living at home. The study shed some light on how older millennials have been faring during the Great Recession.
According to a Pew Research analysis of the 2012 data, lower levels of employment, an increase in college enrollment, and a decrease in young people getting married are major factors in the increase of millennials living at home.
The survey followed 13,000 high school students who were sophomores in 2002, and checked in with them in 2012 to see where are they now.
Some of the results are:
- 10% living with roommate(s), prompting fellow millennial Katy Waldman to write an embarrassing Slate article bearing the headline, "More 27-Year-Olds Live With Parents Than Roommates"
- 53.8 percent made less than $25,000 from employment in 2011
- 40% had been unemployed for one or more months since January 2009
- 13% reported they were neither working for pay nor taking postsecondary courses
- 60.2 % of those who had enrolled in college, reported they had taken out student loans
Consider the above article. How it is "embarrassing" to live with your parents. Then compare the American idea of separate, isolated households against the cultures of many, many other lands, and times, where several generations may live, and work, out of one house. Do these extended families only live together for economic reasons? Or might they actually enjoy being together? Look at all the familial dysfunction in America. Maybe the popular fallacy that it's perfectly normal to break up an extended family, with the parents living on one coast and their offspring living way out on the other, is doing more to destroy the modern family than anything else.