Why Gen Z Aren’t Moving Out On Their Own — And It’s Not Just Housing Costs

WARSAW — They earn more, they don’t have unemployment issues, they have cheaper apartments and loans, and still… they prefer to live with their parents. Looking at the numbers, it’s starting to look like a myth that the poor situation on the housing market alone is forcing Gen Z to stay at home.

In Poland, more than half of people under the age of 35 still live with their parents. For some, including Magdalena Biejat, a Presidential candidate who is running for the New Left party, this is “because they have nowhere to move.”

For her, the issue is so pressing that she has made it a pillar of her campaign. “I will use my presidential legislative initiative for this purpose,” she promised recently.

Indeed, for years there has been a visible increase in the percentage of so-called “nesters” — people entering adulthood who do not move out of their family homes. But is the explanation for this problem really limited to the lack of housing availability and, more broadly, to the economy? Or are there some other factors at play?

According to Eurostat data, in 2023, almost 53% of people aged 25-34 in Poland were “nesting.” This is a historic record. For the parliamentary left and leftist commentators, the answer to the question about the reasons for this situation is simply economic: apartments are getting more expensive, loans are unavailable, and as a consequence young people have no choice but to live with their parents.

But this is only part of the truth.

Pandemic, inflation, fluctuations

It is, in any case, undeniable that real estate prices have increased drastically in the last two years. And on top of that, the creditworthiness of Poles has decreased by and large. The invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine caused a huge wave of refugees. The largest Polish cities had to accommodate over a million new residents in a short time, resulting in major shifts for the housing market that caused landlords to raise prices.

Then came the second shock: inflation caused by the end of the pandemic and, on the other hand, an attempt to cut off Russian hydrocarbons as quickly as possible. The latter caused huge fluctuations in the energy markets, which caused a cascade effect throughout the economy.

To fight inflation, central banks in Poland and around the world raised interest rates, which limited the creditworthiness of Poles. Apartments became less available. In a very short time, apartments became more expensive.

Higher wages, more time at home

This could be the end of the story about the causes of Polish “nesting.” But what has been described above can at most explain the increase in the percentage of young people living with their parents, which occurred after 2021 (according to Eurostat, around 49% of people aged 25-34 were nesting at that time).

However, nesting in Poland has been growing for many years, including before the outbreak of the war in neighboring Ukraine, and ahead of the soaring inflation that followed. If we delve deeper into Eurostat data, while in the aforementioned 2023 the percentage of people aged 25-34 living with their parents was the aforementioned 53%, in 2005 it was “only” 36%.

At the same time, in 2005, the group of people aged 25-34 numbered over 5.8 million. In 2023, it was less than 4.7 million. At least in this age cohort, the competition for a much larger number of apartments must be much smaller than it was before.

Renting a room

Let’s go further. Over the last 20 years, real average salaries in our country have more than doubled. I would like to point out that this increase has already been corrected for inflation. And this is not just a “statistical glitch”, an error in the data. What is more, the salaries of the youngest people, those who are just entering the labor market, grew slightly faster than the average!

Let’s add the issue of unemployment. Today, the registered unemployment rate is less than 5%. In 2005, depending on the month, it ranged from 17% to 19%. The latest data from the Central Statistical Office shows that the vast majority of nesters (63%) are employed.

While nesters earn noticeably less than people of the same age who do not live with their parents, a large proportion of them — perhaps a dozen or even several dozen percent — could afford to become independent in terms of housing, even by renting a room.

Beyond economics

So while we cannot ignore economics, in the case of nesting there are other factors at work underneath. Simple cultural changes are also at play. The Central Statistical Office writes about them in an extensive study.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Poland has seen significant changes in demographic behaviors regarding family formation and development. Over nearly 30 years, the median age of newlyweds has increased by more than five years (for women from 22 in 1990 to almost 28 in 2018, for men from 25 in 1990 to 30 in 2018), which has also resulted in an increase in the median age of women giving birth to their first child (from 23 in 1990 to 28 in 2017), the analysis says.

And it is precisely the formation of relationships and the decision to have children that influence moving out of home. In addition, there is an increase in the percentage of people who undertake studies.

Life trajectories

All this contributes to the so-called extension of life trajectories. Young people today simply stay young longer. In addition, there are two more phenomena that are difficult to capture numerically. On the one hand — “normalization” of nesting, on the other — the end of the generation conflict.

If many people from our environment choose the nesting model, then we also do not feel social pressure to move out of our parents’ house. When I write about “pressure”, I mean the neutral phenomenon of established social behaviors. Two or three decades ago, disputes regarding lifestyles between parents and young adults were a kind of natural order of things.

Today, this has also changed — young people and their parents live in greater mutual understanding and respect for each other’s customs and needs. This in turn means that one of the important reasons for moving out is eliminated.

In the studies I follow, there are many statements in the style of, “It’s good at home, it’s a cool place.” So this is not strictly a generation of individualists, they simply treat social groups differently. The family has become the basic one for them.

Not our first choice

Economics does not fully explain the process that has occurred. A dozen or so years ago, a person who started working more often preferred to rent the room in question in order to reach certain points of adulthood earlier. Even at the cost of a significant deterioration in their standard of living. The decision was aided by “nagging” parents and the fact that a large number of friends did exactly the same.

It must therefore be acknowledged that a fairly large proportion of young adults today simply prefer to live with their parents. Is there anything wrong with that? Well, for my generation — people entering their 40s — it would not be the first choice.

I hope that Generation Z, when they are the same age as the current millennials, will also come to this conclusion.