Economists' Outlook

Housing stats and analysis from NAR's research experts.

  • Between 2007 and 2011, there were almost 3 million more doubled-up households.
  • According to David Johnson and the Census Bureau data, the number and share of doubled-up households and adults sharing households across the country increased over the course of the recession. The “doubled-up” households are defined as those that include at least one “additional” adult, a person age 18 or older who is not enrolled in school and is not the householder, spouse or cohabiting partner of the householder.
  • In spring 2007, there were 19.7 million doubled-up households, amounting to 17.0 percent of all households. In the spring of 2011, the number of such households jumped to 21.8 million, or 18.3 percent. In total, 61.7 million adults, or 27.7 percent, were doubled-up in 2007, rising to 69.2 million, or 30.0 percent, in 2011.
  • Young adults were especially hard-hit, with 5.9 million people ages 25 to 34 living in their parents’ household in 2011, up from 4.7 million before the recession. The remaining 14.2 percent of young adults lived in their parents’ households in March 2011, up more than two percentage points over the period.
  • These young adults who lived with their parents had an official poverty rate of only 8.4 percent, since the income of their entire family is compared with the poverty threshold. If their poverty status were determined by their own income, 45.3 percent would have had income falling below the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65.
  • This data is available from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to Current Population Survey. For more information: http://www.census.gov/cps/.
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