More and more, grown kids return home

while the factors listed are important, i believe another big factor, only hint at in the last reason given for returning home, is the diminishing buying power of your work dollar, when compared to the post-war period. there was another study a few years ago on the same subject and it focused on the financial problems of returning kids. this report makes it seem like it's a lifestyle factor as opposed to financial. i would think kit would be mostly financial. little janie doesn't usually return home after a failed relationship because she wants to go cry to daddy; she returns because she can't afford to live on her own.

More and more, grown kids return home
Oct. 3, 2006. 09:28 AM


OTTAWA (CP) — A new study suggests young people in the so-called Generation X, especially those born between 1972 and 1976, were three times more likely to return home to live with their parents than baby boomers.

The Statistics Canada study used 2001 data to examine patterns in the frequency with which young people have returned home over the last few decades and their reasons for doing so.

It found that the tendency to return home at least once has increased in each of five successive generations, starting with the first wave of baby boomers born between 1947 and 1951.

Among these early-wave boomers, the probability of returning home within five years of first leaving was less than 12 per cent for men and 10 per cent for women.

In contrast, the probability for the later wave of Gen Xers, born between 1972 and 1976, was just about three times higher — 32 per cent for men and 28 per cent for women.

Factors that help explain this growing trend include the increasing acceptance of common-law relationships, which are more likely to fail than marriages; the pursuit of higher education, which tends to leave young graduates with heavy student debts; the reduced stigma attached to living with parents and a desire for a standard of living impossible to afford on their own.