New data released by Eurostat has shown that more than two out of every three young Irish adults were still living at home last year.
The freshly released data from the European Union’s statistical office showed that 68 per cent of Irish adults aged 25 to 29 still lived at home last year, which contrasts sharply with percentages seen in other European nations.
The number of young adults living at home here sat above the EU average, which is 42 per cent. In Scandinavian countries, the vast majority of adults in their late twenties do not live with their parents. In Denmark, the number of 25-29-year-olds living at home was just 4.4 per cent, while in Finland, it was 5.7 per cent. Similarly, in Sweden, just 6.4 per cent of adults in this age group still lived at home.
The statistics were presented in Eurostat’s ‘Young Europeans’ interactive online infographic tool, which allows young people to compare themselves to others throughout Europe.
More men in their late twenties than women live at home here, the figures show – with 74 per cent of men aged 25-29 falling into this category, compared to 61 per cent of young women. The EU research found that 45.5 per cent of young people in this age group reported their life satisfaction as high, with just 3.5 per cent describing their satisfaction with life as “low”.
Despite such a high percentage of those in their late twenties still living at home in Ireland, the figures show that young adults in Ireland have one of the highest rates of third-level education throughout the EU. 67.3 per cent of women aged 25-29 have a third level education in Ireland, compared to an EU average of 46.9 per cent.
Statistics from web portal Landgeist, published in June, showed there were huge differences in the numbers of young adults living with their parents across Europe. While the numbers of young people in Western Europe living with their parents was reported as being relatively low, Ireland is at the higher end of the scale – with countries including the Netherlands at the lower end, with 14 per cent of young adults there living at home.
In sharp contrast, the number of young adults living at home is much lower in the United States, with roughly 16.7 per cent of 25-34 year-olds still living with their parents.
Eurostat data shows that the highest percentages of young adults still at home can be found in the Balkan countries, including Croatia, where 80 per cent of young adults still live with their parents.
The number of young adults living at home with parents has doubled in ten years, while data from Eurostat, published in June, showed a 20 per cent increase in adults aged 18-24 living at home since 2014.
The new figures point to the crisis in home affordability here, while a separate study, published at the end of May by Eurofound, found that homeownership across the EU between 2012 and 2020 dropped, declining by more than 3 percentage points in Spain, Denmark, Cyprus, Finland, Bulgaria, and Denmark.
The lost prospect of home ownership was driven by a decline in ownership among young people and low-income groups, with a rise in the proportion of young adults aged 20-29 relying on private rentals.
Eurofound reported that many young adults have not been in a position to move out of the family home due to a lack of affordable housing options.
The EU agency found that the age at which at least 50 per cent of people in the EU were living outside their parental home rose from 26 to 28 between 2007 and 2019. Between 2010 and 2019, Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Belgium, Greece faced the largest increases in people aged 25–34 living with their parents.
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