The ‘boomerang’ generation

Britain is producing a generation of adults who are twice as likely as other Europeans to return to the family homes in their twenties. In the UK each year 4 per cent of those aged between 16 and 29 who have moved out of the family home return to live with their parents, double the percentage in countries such as France, Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Researchers have pointed to the high cost of housing, the early age at which British children leave home for the first time, and that many ‘rush to live as a couple’ in order to move out sooner and then break up, as reasons for the higher percentage of British young people returning home.