If you're looking for tomorrow's homeowners, you may need to be patient. According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 17.9% of people 18 and older lived in someone else's household during 2011, up from 16% in 2007, prior to the start of the economic recession.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 41.2 million adults in 2011 lived in a household in which they were neither the householder, the householder's spouse, nor the householder's cohabiting partner. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of these additional adults increased by 1.9 million, from 17.3% to 17.9% of adults. Many of the adults sharing a household with relatives would have been in poverty if they had been living on their own, according to the Census Bureau. The official poverty rate for additional adults (based on family income) in 2011 was 15.8%
In 2011, more than one in three young adults 18 to 24 were residents in someone else's household; the same was true of more than 30% of those 25 to 34. For the latter group, the share of additional adults increased by 4.5 percentage points since 2007, compared with a 1.7 percentage-point increase for those 18 to 24.
In recent years, shared households have increased as a proportion of all U.S. households. In 2007, prior to the start of the economic recession, 19.8 million or 17.6% of households were shared. Nationally, shared households peaked in 2010 at 22.2 million or 19.4% of all households and declined to 22 million, or 19.2% of households, in 2011.
In the District of Columbia, California, Florida, Hawaii, New York and Nevada, 20% or more of the population 18 and older lived in someone else's household in 2011, the highest shares among the states and the state equivalents. The number and percentage of these additional adults increased in 40 states between 2007 and 2011 with larger increases in the South. Florida experienced a 4.4 percentage point increase to lead all states, followed by Nevada (3.9 percentage points).