While the recent increase of shared living has been attributed to the large number of millennials moving back in with their parents, the long-term increase is being driven by parents moving in with their adult children.
In 2017, only 18 percent of extra adults lived in a household with non-relatives. Today, 14 percent of adults living in someone else’s household are a parent of the household head, up from 7 percent in 1995. The share of adult children living in their parents' home today is at 47 percent, down from 52 percent in 1995. However, according to the Pew Research Center, 30 percent of extra adults living in another adult's household were people under the age of 35.
The rise in shared living is likely not simply a response to rising housing costs and weak incomes. Nonwhite adults are much more likely than white adults to be doubled up, mirroring their greater propensity to live in multigenerational households. Nonwhite adults are a growing share of the adult population, and thus some of the rise in shared living arrangements is due to longer-running demographic change.