When Chloe Henry’s younger sister moved out of their family home, she found it confronting.
“It led to some panic about whether I should have already moved out by this point, and whether I am making the right choices financially,” 23-year-old Henry said of her 21-year-old sister’s move.
“But she moved out with her partner, finished her degree earlier, she went into the workforce earlier, and earns more, so I don’t feel as bad about it now.”
Henry has a full-time job working in communications but the contribution she makes to her parents to live with them in Berwick, 40km south-east of Melbourne, is far less than living closer to her workplace in Fitzroy, where the median rent for a unit is $580 a week.
And as the cost of living soars, Henry said making the choice to live at home, where she feels welcome by her parents and can save money, has “had more of a positive impact on my mental health, as it has allowed me to worry less about my current financial situation”.
Like other countries, Australia has seen young adults living with their parents at greater rates in recent years, in part driven by an ongoing housing crisis.
Research published on Thursday has shed light on how living at home is affecting young people, finding it was generally associated with poorer youth mental health.
But the association between living at home and poorer mental health differs depending on the young person’s circumstances. Young people living with parents outside major cities, those on a low income, or those who also had a partner living with them at the family home, reported the poorest mental health. Young adults aged 30 to 34 years, and women, also struggled more mentally with living at home.
The study found these groups also saw the steepest rise in rates of living at home between 2002 and 2018, increasing by 46% among those residing outside major cities, 36% among older young adults, 28% among females, and 10% among low-income groups.
Meanwhile, those aged from 18 to 21 and those on higher incomes were more likely to have better mental health if they still lived at home with their parents.
The paper, published in the journal PLOS One, found the impact on mental health seemed dependent on whether young adults were living with parents to “get by” or to “get ahead”.
Researchers made the findings by comparing the mental health of young adults who live at home with their counterparts who live independently, using a national dataset of young adults aged 18 to 34, drawn from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey.
The lead author of the Hilda study, Amber Howard from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Health Policy, said relying on co-residence with parents “as a way of housing young adults with a lack of affordable rental options is problematic, because ultimately it’s an option available and helpful for some people and not for others, driving further wedges between young people”.
“And that’s got quite important repercussions for socioeconomic inequalities in the long run,” she said.
The finding highlighted the need to address housing market constraints, including high rent costs and high rent increases, she said.
“There are also broader issues in the Australian welfare system that need to be addressed, such as a completely inadequate supply of social housing,” she said. “These persistent issues then puts more pressure on parents to assist their children in a difficult housing market.”
Prof Patrick McGorry, the executive director of youth mental health organisation Orygen, said the findings from the study were important, and that young people were increasingly experiencing poor mental health “due to the financial punishment that has been meted out to them by old people”.
“There is an intergenerational fairness issue, with older generations being very selfish, not addressing it, and keeping benefits for themselves such as negative gearing and stage-three tax cuts,” he said.
“And yet the intergenerational report shows how we’re going to be relying on these generations of young people coming through to support the growing population of older people. Younger generations have both hands tied behind their back by older generations.”
