For many young adults in their 20s or early 30s, it is normal to have more than one person from different households live together. Rents are high and the job market is thin these days, especially during the current pandemic.
Census Bureau data now suggests that since 2010, more adults age 35 and up live in households with an estimate of three people or more.
The term “doubled-up households” or “shared living” explains a living situation from more than one household, which usually includes one or more adults – age 18 or older, who is not the spouse or life partner of the head of house – in addition to the person renting or owning the apartment or house. Data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau reported that an estimated one-third of adults are living in such doubled-up households across the nation.
Between 2007 and 2011—during and just after the Great Recession — doubled-up households increased from 19.7 million to 21.8 million. Around 5.9 million young adults, ages 25 – 34, were in those types of living arrangements.
Almost 79 million people – which is 31.9 percent of the U.S. adult population – lived in doubled-up households in 2017. In 2004 it was only 27.4 percent.
The states with the highest percentage of young adults living with roommates are Hawaii with over 47 percent and California with almost 45 percent — both expensive states to live in.
In California, especially in the Los Angeles Metro area, Long Beach, and Anaheim, about 49.3 percent of adults live with roommates in doubled-up households. The average number of adults per doubled-up households is 3.2. Individuals who want to rent as single occupants are looking to put close to half of their earnings toward rent, according to the current real estate market. Living in a doubled-up two-bedroom rental could result in saving up to 40 percent more than living in a single occupied one-bedroom apartment.
The current pandemic, and the recession that followed, forced many individuals to downsize due to financial hardships, which makes it difficult to afford rent in a single occupied rental.
According to another report from 2018 conducted by Pew Research, an expanding portion of the population is already living in so-called “multigenerational households.” In 2016 the percentage grew to 20 percent from only 12 percent in 1980. A “multigenerational household” is defined as a household with “three or more generations of parents and their families,” according to the United States Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau.
One of the reasons for that is the growing ethnic and racial diversity across the states. The African-American, Hispanic, and Asian population tend to live in multigenerational households more often than Caucasian-Americans.
