Nearly 5 Million Americans Move Back in With Mom and Dad

As we've noted a few times, one of the reasons there appears to be more housing available than there is demand is that so many people have moved in with parents or other family members because of high unemployment rates and the uncertain economy.

But as economists like Mark Schniepp have pointed out, that doesn't mean these extended family living arrangements are permanent, as some advocates of higher density wistfully hope for. In fact, when things do start to improve, mom and dad are pretty likely going to decide it's time for the boomerang kids to move out. That is, if the daughter-in-law doesn't decide to take that step first. And when household formations start to go up again, we're likely to see a fairly rapid increase in demand for rental and for-sale housing.

Now, thanks to the Pew Foundation, we have a better indication of just how many people are doubling-up with family members:

Large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives. This helped fuel the largest increase in modern history in the number of Americans living in multi-generational households. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked from 46.5 million to 51.4 million.

You can read the summary here, with links to the full report.