More millennials live with parents

For the first time on record, living with parents is now the most common arrangement for people ages 18 to 34, an analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center has found.

Nearly one-third of millennials live with their parents, slightly more than the proportion who live with a spouse or partner. It's the first time that living at home has outpaced living with a spouse for this age group since such record-keeping began in 1880.

The remaining young adults are living alone, with other relatives, in college dorms, as roommates or under other circumstances.

As recently as 2000, nearly 43% of young adults ages 18 to 34 were married or living with a partner. By 2014, that proportion was just 31.6%. In 2000, only 23% of young adults were living with parents. In 2014, the figure reached 32.1%.

The proportion of young adults now living with their parents is similar to the proportions that prevailed from 1880 through 1940, when the figure peaked, Pew found. Yet in those decades, the most common arrangement for young adults was living with a spouse rather than with parents.

“We've simply got a lot more singles,” said Richard Fry, lead author of the report and a senior economist at the Pew Research Center. “They're the group much more likely to live with their parents.”

The typical U.S. woman now marries at 27.1 years old, the typical man at 29.2, according to census data. That's up from lows of 20.1 for women and 22.5 for men in 1956.