Young men in UK more likely than women to live with parents

Jessica Murray – The Guardian

London: Young men are more likely to live at home with their parents than women of the same age, with a third of 20- to 34-year-old men in the UK living in their parental home.

Data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed 33.7% of men aged 20-34 lived with parents in 2024, compared with less than a quarter (22.1%) of women the same age.

In total, the number of young people aged 20-34 living with their parents has risen by 10% over the past decade, from 3.3 million in 2014 to 3.6 million in 2024.

The ONS said this was “part of trend of adults reaching milestones later in life”, and could be explained by a number of factors including increased housing costs.

This reflects a trend seen across Europe, where data from an EU agency showed the proportion of 25- to-34-year-olds in employment living in their parental home had risen from 24% to 27% between 2017 and 2022.

The data also showed a rise in the number of people living alone in the UK in the past decade has been driven by an increase in older people aged over 65.

In 2024, there were an estimated 4.3 million people aged over 65 living alone, up from 3.5 million in 2014. The increase means that half of all people living alone in the UK were aged 65 years or over in 2024.

The ONS said this reflected an ageing population and there was a higher proportion of women over 65 years living alone (40.9%) than men of the same age (27.0%), because of higher life expectancy for women.

The data estimated there were 8.4 million people living alone in the UK in 2024, up 11% from 7.6 million in 2014.

The data on families and household types in the UK also showed that the proportion of lone parents who are fathers has grown, from 13.1% a decade ago, to 16.7% last year.

While married couples still made up the largest proportion of families in the latest estimates, this has decreased to 65.1% last year from 67.1% in 2014. The ONS said this was down to more couples living together without getting married.