Record Share of Young Men Still Living With Parents in UK

A third of young men in the UK were still living with their parents in 2024, a level that has not been matched in the Office for National Statistics series since at least 2007. The ONS said 33.7% of men aged 20 to 34 lived at home, compared with 22.1% of women in the same age group, underscoring a gender gap that has persisted through the housing squeeze.

The pattern is not just a family arrangement. It is a sign of how sharply housing costs have pushed back the age of independence. The government’s English Housing Survey said many young people were living in concealed households with parents for longer because they could not afford to buy or rent on their own. The ONS defines concealed households as adults who would prefer to buy or rent independently but cannot afford to do so.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has traced the trend across a wider age band, finding that co-residence among 25- to 34-year-olds rose from 13% in 2006 to 18% in 2024. That shift amounts to around 450,000 more young adults living in a parental home than would have been expected if 2006 rates had held. The IFS said the share peaked at 21% during the COVID-19 pandemic before easing slightly, but the overall direction has remained upward. In 2023-24, 23% of men and 15% of women aged 25 to 34 were living with parents.

The pressures fall unevenly across the country’s young adults. The IFS found particularly high parental co-residence among UK-born Bangladeshi young adults, at 62%, and Indian young adults, at 50%, pointing to the way housing costs, income gaps and family resources interact with ethnicity and birthplace. Homeownership has also eroded sharply among the young, with the IFS saying the share of 25- to 34-year-olds who owned a home fell from 55% in 1997 to 35% in 2017.

That decline carries wider consequences for family formation, mobility and inequality. The House of Lords Library has highlighted the gap between house prices and incomes as a major barrier for younger people, and the data suggest the barrier is now shaping who can leave home, save, form households and build wealth. For many in their 20s and early 30s, the road to adulthood now runs through a parent’s front door.