Information Note - Young adults aged 18 to 34 years living at home with their parents

Friday 22 March 2024: The CSO notes media reports of approximately two in three people aged between 18 and 34 living at home with their parents. This figure is taken from the Eurostat database and is derived from a longitudinal survey (Survey on Income and Living Conditions – SILC). This figure differs from data from Census 2022 which estimates that the proportion of young adults aged 18 to 34 years living with their parents to be 41%.

There are a number of reasons for the differences in these estimates, including:

• The SILC survey categorises some younger adults - such as third-level students who are financially supported by their parents - as living with their parents even though they may have moved out of the family home while the Census categorises them as living at their term address.
• As SILC is a longitudinal survey, a proportion of the 2022 sample were interviewed in 2020 and/or 2021. The movement of some young adults (students and non-students) back to their family homes during the COVID-19 period is believed to have impacted the replies to this survey and therefore the estimates of the number of young adults who live with their parents.
• SILC is a sample survey whereas the total population is enumerated for Census.

Census 2022 figures showed 41% of people aged between 18 and 34 and 33% of people aged between 25 and 29 were enumerated at their parents’ house on Census night 2022. Due to the issues highlighted above relating to the definition of household membership in the SILC survey, Census figures give a better estimate of the number of young adults actually living with their parents while EU-SILC shows the number of young adults financially dependent on their parents. This Census data is available on the CSO database table: F3052

Ends.