ResearchOctober 1, 20263 min read

Higher Rent Explains Only Part of Why They're Still Home

Since 2007, the share of 25-to-34-year-olds living in a parent's house rose by 4.9 points for women and 5.9 for men. Pay is higher than in 2007, especially for women. Rents, vacancies, wages, and prices together account for about half of that rise.

An East Asian woman sets the dining table while her mother works at the kitchen counter — Annushka Ahuja / Pexels

The parent does the rent math out loud. The 29-year-old has a job, and the bedroom is still the one from high school.

Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, an economist at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research, counted 25-to-34-year-olds living as guests in a parent's house. Since 2007, that share is up 4.9 percentage points for women and 5.9 for men.

Paychecks, especially for women, look like they did before the recession, or better. The bedroom did not go back.

Fair-market rent rose from $1,288 to $1,715 in today's dollars, and empty rentals got scarcer. Set rents, jobs, and prices back to 2007 and about half of the rise in 25-to-34-year-olds at home goes away. The other half is still there, beside later marriage and later kids, and this study does not say which one came first.

What the rent moves

The rent in the study is HUD's fair-market rent, the figure used for housing vouchers. It went from $1,288 in 2007 to $1,715 in 2025, in today's dollars. That is a rise of about a third, and the share of rentals sitting empty fell from 9.9 percent to 7.1 percent.

A large jump in a state's rent lines up with under 1 extra woman per 100, and a little over 1 extra man per 100, living in a parent's house. Vacancies move the number too, by less than the rent.

What came back

Sanzenbacher then put the whole economic picture back to 2007: rents, vacancies, wages, employment, and prices. About 3.0 of the women's 4.9-point rise would disappear. About 2.7 of the men's 5.9 points would.

That is a bit more than half for women, and a bit less than half for men.

Pay is higher than in 2007, and the gain is larger for women. For women ages 35 to 44, the stand-in for the work these younger adults are walking into, median pay rose from about $44,500 to about $54,700. Employment ticked up, from 73 percent to 75 percent.

For men in that same age band, pay rose from about $68,800 to about $74,200, and employment slipped from 88.5 percent to 87 percent. In his model, higher employment and higher pay are tied to men moving out. The same link does not show up for women.

The half he left open

He would not assign the leftover to one cause. A person without a spouse or a child can treat a parent's house as a plan that works, and the years in that house can also make a spouse and a child less likely. The brief stops before choosing.

A bachelor's degree makes this arrangement less likely, and that gap has grown. Black adults, and Asian men, are more likely to be the guest in a parent's house. Those patterns do not account for the increase, because college graduates became a larger share of this age group, and a degree pulls the other way.

A smaller change runs the other direction. The share of 25-to-34-year-olds housing a parent rose from 1.6 percent to 4 percent. Most of the growth at these ages is still the adult child as the guest.

If the argument is the rent

If the fight at the table is only the rent, say the half out loud. Fair-market rent is up by about a third since 2007. About half of the rise in 25-to-34-year-olds at home would remain if that rent, the jobs, and prices looked like 2007.

Ask whether a lease is waiting on a wedding or a child, or whether those are waiting on a place to live.