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42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

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Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#231

Post by PaulHoule »

inigyou wrote: post #202
PaulHoule wrote: post #60

My 20-something son is living with us but he does pay (some) rent. I half expect to have to apologize for this, like when I was growing up people would think you are a loser if you were in this situation. Today people think we are really smart and the people who are paying more rent than they can afford to live alone that are losing.

I am early 30s. I realised this about the time I finished university and thought I might be expected to move out. The housing market was already pretty insane. I got a job that required me to move when I was 25, though, and what I realized after that was that living with your parents constrains you. I don't know how your relationship with your son is, but while I lived with my parents, they expected to know where I w…

He comes and goes as he pleases but is usually pretty open about it. Also he has plenty of space to do construction projects he wants, he'd probably like to keep playing guitar past 11pm but there are limits!

Now it is not a good situation for sex for anyone involved but we have a lot of land so there's nothing better than a love nest made from glamping gear at least in the summer.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#232

Post by sudobash1 »

annjose wrote: post #9

Whenever I see a claim that "x% of adults do y", my brain goes: - "x% of what? what is the denominator?". Without that number, the claim is meaningless. - surely it cannot be the entire population, so it has to be a survey. - how many people participated in the survey? what was the distribution? Here is that info for this study. I found this in the PDF version of the study report [0] referred to at the end of the Nor…

> "x% of what? what is the denominator?"

Another reason the denominator is important is that "parents" are (hopefully) completely a subset of "adults". And not all adults have living parents. So who is counted:

    - All adults
    - Adults with living parents
    - Adults within an age range
    - Adults without children
or what? This really belongs in the title. Without it, as you say, the statistic is meaningless.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#233

Post by charlie90 »

jampekka wrote: post #36

This seems to be some self-help for the well-off (and their kids) to not feel bad about such dependence, but totally ignores the large population whose parents aren't affluent enough to support their children. Or may even need support from their children. I don't think the feefees of the well off is the gravest issue here.

In my experience, poorer families tend to live in multigenerational housing at a much higher rate. So this doesnt seem to be true. Less affuluent usually means more sharing of resources, not less.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#234

Post by rainsford »

LastTrain wrote: post #102
slibhb wrote: post #80

Downward mobility is almost entirely caused by housing costs, which are a self-inflicted problem. We don't, as a matter of intentional policy, build enough housing. I live in an expensive area and I'm always shocked by how many of my friends who cannot afford to buy a home (or even a condo) are NIMBYs. These are people in their 20s through 40s who have been earning since college, can't afford to buy, yet get annoyed…

I really hate this “we don’t build enough housing” narrative these days, because it implies this is a simple supply and demand problem, which it is not. I see so many progressives repeating this line, apparently not understanding that they are suggesting unfettered capitalism (up zoning…) is the solution. The fundamental problem is we simultaneously want our housing to be affordable and good investment. It can’t be b…

Those aren't really two different arguments. Wanting housing to be a good investment is one of the reasons we have a supply problem because it incentivizes people to vote against allowing more housing to be built. But at the end of the day the high cost of housing really is a simple supply problem, it's the reason for that lack of supply that's more complex.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#235

Post by brailsafe »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #227
brailsafe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be, or have been, a very common scenario in Canada, which is why I completely discount when most politicians start going on about a "housing crisis" when in another breath they'll say they don't want houses to get cheaper. If it was a "crisis", one might think houses would be treated with special care instead of basically just another commodity. If a person with wealth can just buy up as many of a finit…

In Canada, second houses and vacant houses are taxed higher than primary residences.

As far as I know, they're taxed higher in the sense that they're not exempt from capital gains, like primary residences are, but in my view it seems like that would at-most be a marginal disincentive if renters don't have much in the way of other options or protections (which vary across the country). Likewise, I'm fairly sure a mom+pop residential landlord can save on tax for any expenses related to secondary suites or secondary properties if it's considered business income. If there is very little suitable supply, it still makes sense to acquire the asset and profit off of rent, although this dynamic may be changing with increased cost of borrowing and less demand depending on market, AirBnB short-term rental restrictions, etc..

When money was free and restrictions were few, non-institutional investors seem to have capitalized aggressively on this, because the price of the property increased dramatically and also it was a near-certainty that there would be a constant stream of inflated rent a landlord could charge.

I'm happy about those tax disincentives, but they do strike me as playing around the margins; in normal economic circumstances, they should play around the margins, but that particular aspect of the economy is so embarrassingly tilted that it's really not funny anymore.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#236

Post by tpmoney »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #65
cliglot wrote: post #53

> CPI inflation would suggest that the current cost ought to be about $692. Rent alone will probably blow that. I live in a burnt out rust belt shithole city and I’m struggling to understand how rent is this high. I pay a good bit more than $692 to live in a slum just outside the ghetto right now and I have to feel gracious for that. It’s closer to what I paid in a decent middle class neighborhood in Florida. That wa…

Let me suggest the problem: CPI inflation suggests a rough doubling of basic living costs. How many jobs can you point to that are paying 2x in 2026 what they were paying in 2000? There are some . But the data seems to suggest that the majority do not.

After the big corrections entry level jobs had to do during and after COVID, I think it's probably more than you think. As an example, the BLS says in 2000 the mean hourly wage for "Food preparation and serving related" jobs was $7.72 / hour [1]. As of May 2025, they list the median hourly wage (yes median and mean aren't the same, but for this purpose, I don't think the differences would affect the overall point that much) at $16.85 / hour [2]

Likewise for "Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance", we went from $9.41/hour to $18.12 / hour.

Though admittedly not every field saw such gains. "Sales and related" didn't do quite as well, going from $13.46 to just $18.52. "Office and Administrative" did a bit better going from $12.64 to $22.81, but that's still a bit under the 2x mark. "Construction and extraction" also missed the 2x mark by a bit, going from $16.56 to $28.63.

Still the numbers I think aren't quite as dire as the vibes make it feel right now.

[1]: https://www.bls.gov/oes/bulletin_2000.pdf [2]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#237

Post by pibaker »

rurp wrote: post #179
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything you said is a typical NIMBY talking point: > Dozens of “luxury” units built cheaply, selling for 4,000$ for a 1 bedroom A nebulous definition of "luxury", and totally ignores the fact that people with money can get what they want anyway, pushing those with less out. So yes, more "luxury" builds help. > They get subsidized by the local government for including maybe 5 units that are “low income” and…

It's all talking points on both sides. "Build more housing" being the one true solution has become a religious tenant in a lot of wonkish circles. I see it repeated uncritically every single time this topic comes up on HN and similar spaces. The reality is that demand is always going to far outstrip supply in certain areas. You can only cram so many houses into a place like San Franciso, even if you raze the city to…

> You can only cram so many houses into a place like San Franciso

Well, yeah, a human can only run so fast, but San Francisco is not even trying to run — it's barely crawling. Go to the sunset district, or Bayview, or any neighborhood in the western or southern half of the city and you will see nothing but rows after rows of single family homes — and yes, the car is a part of the family. Replace it with something like new york's west village and you will more than double its density.

> There actually is a ton of affordable housing in the US, but it's mostly in areas that people in influential industries like tech and media tend to sneer at

Yeah, just tell everyone to move to somewhere in the rust belt where the only job opening is in public sector health care that may or may not get cut by the current administration, that will help.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#238

Post by lovich »

rurp wrote: post #179
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything you said is a typical NIMBY talking point: > Dozens of “luxury” units built cheaply, selling for 4,000$ for a 1 bedroom A nebulous definition of "luxury", and totally ignores the fact that people with money can get what they want anyway, pushing those with less out. So yes, more "luxury" builds help. > They get subsidized by the local government for including maybe 5 units that are “low income” and…

It's all talking points on both sides. "Build more housing" being the one true solution has become a religious tenant in a lot of wonkish circles. I see it repeated uncritically every single time this topic comes up on HN and similar spaces. The reality is that demand is always going to far outstrip supply in certain areas. You can only cram so many houses into a place like San Franciso, even if you raze the city to…

Do you think if you built a million houses for every person that the price would go down?

I’m using hyperbole here specifically because I’ve met nimbys who confidently state that the price would not go down in that situation.

Assuming your answer would be yes, then part of the yimby/abundance crowds argument is that this needs to be done everywhere or at least at a state level. Yea if only a single city does it they may never be able to out produce their demand, but that’s more of a prisoners dilemma issue between cities than a problem with building more housing leading to lower prices.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#239

Post by lovich »

inigyou wrote: post #192
ironman1478 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all that is allowed due to local and state zoning codes. Loosening restrictions on what can be built will bring down costs and all for more types of buildings. The bland housing is all that pencils out for builders at the moment.

They did this in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern's government and house prices have started to fall, but only slightly so far. IIRC the rules were something like, lots in a certain radius of a train station or town center are mandatory mixed-use zoning, overriding any city rules to the contrary. It was very controversial for the national government to override city governments like that.

Is getting the prices to fall at all not a massive success when they are rising everywhere else? Wouldn’t even just arresting the price increases at 0 while other countries/regions deal with rapidly increasing prices be a win?

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#240

Post by LastTrain »

rainsford wrote: post #234
LastTrain wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate this “we don’t build enough housing” narrative these days, because it implies this is a simple supply and demand problem, which it is not. I see so many progressives repeating this line, apparently not understanding that they are suggesting unfettered capitalism (up zoning…) is the solution. The fundamental problem is we simultaneously want our housing to be affordable and good investment. It can’t be b…

Those aren't really two different arguments. Wanting housing to be a good investment is one of the reasons we have a supply problem because it incentivizes people to vote against allowing more housing to be built. But at the end of the day the high cost of housing really is a simple supply problem, it's the reason for that lack of supply that's more complex.

Maybe you can point me to a recent example in the US where more housing was built resulting in a noticeable decrease in housing costs. And a good investment is one where the value increases faster than inflation, the math doesn’t work.
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