Over the years, many of us have poked fun at the large numbers of people in their twenties and thirties still living with their parents. While some attribute this to delayed maturation, at the heart of the issue is basic economics. According to an analysis of U.S. Census data released by Apartment List, a rental listing website, inflation adjusted apartment rents have expanded by sixty four percent since nineteen sixty.
But as reported in the Wall Street Journal, household incomes have only risen by eighteen percent over this same period. Renters fared particularly badly during the decade between two thousand and twenty ten, when inflation adjusted household incomes fell nine percent while rents climbed by eighteen. There were two recessions during that decade and a housing bust in two thousand and nine that drove millions of homeowners into the rental market.
The implication: America has grown much less affordable for renters over the past half century, and trends suggest that this pattern will continue. Reasons for this are numerous, including rising construction costs, land use restrictions, and the fact that renters are migrating from more affordable cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee to more expansive ones like New York, San Francisco and Washington.
