Xitlali Tapia and Ivan Perez got engaged in January and set a wedding date for Nov. 25.
After that, they’ll move in with a pair of unexpected roommates — her parents.
Perez, 26, never dreamed of living with his in-laws. But he and his fiancee, also 26, plan to return to school later this year, meaning they’ll study more and work less. For them, he says, sharing the Tapia’s Anaheim home and saving for a more solid launch slightly later in life isn’t about desperation or lack of ambition — it’s financial common sense.
“We can use that money we would spend on rent to save up, to try to get ahead,” Perez said.
Similar things could be said by Liz Arevalo of Eastvale and Hilary Brown of Garden Grove and, literally, hundreds of thousands of other young adults in Southern California.
For people ages 18 to 34, living with one or both parents is now the most common living arrangement — 32 percent do so — beating out living alone, with roommates, or setting up house with a spouse or partner according to a clutch of new reports on how different generations live. It’s a statistic that Pew Research Center says hasn’t applied to young Americans for at least 130 years.
It’s also particularly pronounced in Southern California. In the Inland Empire, 44.5 percent of all adults under the age of 34 live with their parents, making the Riverside/San Bernardino metro area No. 2 in the country behind Miami. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Orange County region, at 41.5 percent, ranked No. 4, behind New York City.
Several factors play into this. Southern California and other urban areas are home to more people from parts of the world where younger people traditionally stay at home until marriage.
But the bigger factor is money. In urban markets, entry level wages — the money often earned by millennials — isn’t enough to support independent living.
Moving out in Southern California can be hard for young adults earning the region’s typical starter wages. In the Los Angeles/Orange County area, median rent in 2015 was $1,348, or 68 percent of millennials’ median monthly income of $1,975, according to Abodo, an apartment listing service that also tracks demographic and economic data about young adults. In the Inland Empire, which had a lower median rent, a typical wage earner under 34 still would have shelled out 65 percent of their median monthly income. The area also had the highest 2015 unemployment for the cohort among the large metro areas in Abodo’s study — 12.6 percent.
With such factors in play, the stigma of living with parents is fading. And while some stereotypes that describe millennials — from “ambitious” to “self-centered,” “unprofessional,” “entitled, and “lazy” — feel entrenched in American culture, they don’t take into account some demographic facts:
• Millennials are the biggest, most diverse and best educated generation.
• Millennials came of age during the worst economy since the Great Depression, and many of the jobs created during the recovery haven’t paid well enough to help them catch up.
• Data shows that millennials are pushing off some life milestones — marriage, parenthood, home ownership — as they work toward economic security.
New stage of life
For Brown, of Garden Grove, living with her family is about emotional security as well as economics.
At 28, she attends community college, on and off, with a long-term plan to become a teacher and writer. She says balancing school and part-time hours as a ride operator at a local theme park is tough — though not necessarily as tough as life would be if she couldn’t live with her parents.
She gets along with her family and, parental doting aside, she’s treated like the adult she is.
“In the back of my head, I don’t want to be too comfortable,” Brown said. “Because I’m afraid: What if I never leave?”
Still, Brown feels anxious when she learns that peers are moving up and moving out.
“It’s crushing,” she said. “When you’re younger, you have models (about) going to school (and) then going out on your own,” she said. “You think: ‘That’s the standard. Being independent means leaving home.’ ”
But, for now, she can’t afford to move out. Her parents don’t collect rent, but she still has bills to pay and she still doesn’t (yet) earn enough to live on her own.
Brown’s father, Greg, understands the economic forces keeping his daughter and his 25-year-old son under his roof. He also says it’s different, today, than what he experienced at the same age. After Greg Brown graduated high school, in 1980, he moved briskly through the typical young-adult milestones — finishing college and earning a master’s degree and marrying his wife by his mid-20s. Today, he’s a real estate contract manager.
The elder Brown said he’d like to see his kids move out, but doesn’t want to rush them out the door without a career and proper financial footing.
“Our expectations for our kids are probably in line with what we were expected to do,” Greg Brown said. “But we understand, for several reasons, for some millennials, it’s gonna take a bit longer. In some cases maybe a lot longer.”
That time frame is hardly limited to the Brown household.
Most young Americans, in fact, are hitting traditional adult milestones later than their parents and grandparents, says Frank Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who authored the 2010 study, “On a New Schedule: Transitions to Adulthood and Family Change.” He cites everything from shifting cultural norms to recent economics as key factors.
He also points out the same could have been said about “young adults” throughout American history.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, young people were expected to contribute to the family economy, but gender roles and other societal barriers prevented women and minority groups from fully participating. The U.S. Census of 1880 recorded that a full 30 percent of people ages 18 to 34 lived with their parents, roughly the same level as today, and the share grew slowly but steadily until 1940. During that period, few young adults lived alone or as single parents.
The situation started to change after World War II. Jobs in the post-War era often required little in the way of formal education, allowing people to marry, have children and move into their own homes at younger ages than their parents or grandparents were when they hit the same milestones. By 1960, nearly two-thirds of American adults under the age of 34 were married or living with a partner in their own home; just one-in-five still lived in their parents’ home.
The decline of well-paying manufacturing jobs, particularly since the 1980s, has led to higher education becoming the key to middle-class employment and lifestyle. Meanwhile, the rising cost for a university degree, and the time needed to complete it, has pushed back the average move-out age.
“Why more education? The jobs seemingly require it, though our educational system is not especially well designed to produce medium-skilled technical jobs,” Furstenberg said.
Another key to the trend is family structure. Furstenberg says young adults who grow up in stable households, and whose families have the money to pay for college, enjoy advantages that help them move out earlier. Those without such resources and support face an uphill battle to self-sufficiency.
“There have been strong currents that have made it an upstream swim for people at the bottom and a downstream swim for people at the top,” he said.
In 2014, about a third of people under the age of 34 without a bachelor’s degree lived with parents; fewer lived with a spouse or partner. The rates are flipped for college graduates; only 19 percent live at home.
Over the last half century, women increasingly have become more independent of the household as they sought higher education and professional careers. That’s also translated into delays for marriage and parenthood. In 2014, millennial women were still more likely to live with a spouse or partner than they were to be living with their parents, but they are projected to cross that threshold soon, according to Pew’s study.
Meanwhile, men are taking an increasingly active role in parenting, an issue that many young people note as another reason to delay marriage and parenthood, Furstenberg said.
Who heads the home?
A census study of American adults under the age of 34 last year found that multi-race people, American natives and Pacific Islanders, as a group, were most likely to live with parents; other races didn’t trail by much. Asian young adults were the only racial group more likely to live with a spouse or partner.
In California, overall population growth is modest as net immigration flattens and birth rates decline. The state is projected to grow by 355,000 residents — about the population of Anaheim — annually over the next five years, mostly by births outpacing deaths, not immigration. However, over the past two decades, home construction in California has not kept pace, a factor that has led to a rise in the number of people per household.
A Register analysis of census estimates for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties found that household formation — meaning people buying or renting on their own, away from other family — grew 5.5 percent between 2005 and 2015. But the increases came among older people (seniors age 85 and up increasingly are listed as heads of households, as are people 45 and older), while the number of households headed by people 44 and younger actually declined.
Much of that reflects a lack of affordable housing options, even for younger adults on strong career tracks.
Arevalo, 30, brings in a decent income as an operations supervisor at an ambulance service in Brea. But after a brief stint of living on her own in her early 20s, she’s been back with her family home in Eastvale, buying groceries, helping with rent and helping to take care of a sister who has special needs.
She’s also got longer-term career plans — something Arevalo says her parents support.
Still, she says, she feels like she’s overstayed her welcome.
“At 30 years old, I should have my own place,” she said. “It’s frustrating not living on my own.”
By fall, she’ll be back at Riverside City College, finishing prerequisites to become a registered nurse. Within the next five years, Arevalo hopes to be married, move into her own home and start a family. Living with her parents, for now, allows her to save money to achieve those goals.
Millennials aren’t skeptical about home ownership, but they are concerned about the financial viability of buying one, said Jimmy Sengenberger, chief executive of the Millennial Policy Center, a think tank that studies generational issues.
“Many millennials are hesitant to take on a financial obligation as significant as home ownership when repaying student loan debt is already such a burden, wages aren’t growing, and the job market is still relatively weak for younger people,” Sengenberger said via email. He pointed to something unexpected — zoning policies — that help keep housing stocks low and rent prices high in the kind of urban markets that dominate Southern California.
Another issue that might be keeping young adults at home is student debt.
During an era when it’s been tough for young adults to break into the labor force, the price of college has exploded — and resources to pay for those degrees haven’t kept pace.
“(Young adults are) compelled to get more schooling than they did in the past,” said Furstenberg. “But, paradoxically, public support for education has dwindled. There’s a much higher expectation that it’s up to the family to shoulder the burden.”
Furstenberg, noting that California already subsidizes community colleges, said he supported former President Barack Obama’s 2015 proposal to make two years of community college free for aspiring students.
Segenberger’s conservative Millennial Policy Center contends the opposite. He believes the cost of higher education has skyrocketed because of too much government involvement in offsetting tuition. Culling various student loan programs, grants and tax credits, and reforming accreditation, he said, would better allow market forces to lower costs.
Old school expectations
The trend of young adults remaining in the nest is likely to continue beyond the millennial generation as long as marriage and parenthood are delayed and housing and education costs rise, Furstenberg said.
“I don’t see anything dramatic changing in the next 20 years,” he said. “It would require a large growth of perceived opportunities and optimism about the job market.”
Xitlali Tapia, the bride-to-be, and her future husband, Perez, will be living with her parents in their three-bedroom Anaheim home for the foreseeable future.
Both have four-year degrees, both are gaining experience with entry-level jobs in their fields and both are starting post-grad work. Tapia wants to be an elementary school teacher — Perez, a neonatal doctor.
“In the back our heads, we knew that was going to be the plan, given the situation we’re in,” Perez said.
Tapia’s parents, Ramiro and Irma, are on board. They immigrated to the United States from Mexico in the 1980s, and they view education as a family priority. They also said they worked hard for their daughter to have opportunities they didn’t have, and they expect the same of their daughter and future son-in-law.
“If Xitlali wasn’t sure of her future goals, or didn’t go to college, we would definitely expect her to be working an eight-hour job and taking care of herself while living at home,” Ramiro Tapia said.
“It’s either studying or working,” Irma Tapia said.
“Both is also good.”
The age range delineating the millennial generation varies. Pew Research Center defined the generation as born between 1981 and 1997 — ages 20 to 36 in 2017. The U.S. Census Bureau’s scope is larger: Millennials were born between 1982 and 2000 — ages 17 to 35 in 2017. A young adult of any generation is often considered to be ages 18 to 34.
Abodo’s study differs slightly from Pew Research Center’s because it defined millennials living at home more broadly to include grandchildren, in-laws, foster children and others in relation to the head of household.
Staff writer Jeff Collins contributed to this report.
