Boomerang Generation

Boomerang Generation is a term applied to young adults graduating high school and college in the 21st century in Western culture. They are so named for the percentage of whom choose to share a home with their parents after previously living on their own – thus boomeranging back to their parents' residence. This arrangement can take many forms, ranging from situations that mirror the high dependency of pre-adulthood to highly independent, separate-household arrangements.

The term can be used to indicate only those members of this age-set that actually do return back home, not the whole generation. In as much as home-leaving practices differ by economic class, the term is most meaningfully applied to members of the middle class.

The parental expectation of having an "empty nest", traditional in the United States and some other industrialized cultures, has increasingly given way in the 1990s and 2000s to the reality of a "cluttered nest" or "crowded nest". The latter term was popularized by Kathleen Shaputis's 2004 book The Crowded Nest Syndrome: Surviving the Return of Adult Children, which takes a critical view of the trend.

University of Western Ontario professor Roderic Beaujot discusses the phenomenon of delayed home-leaving at length. He cites Canadian census statistics showing that, in 1981, 27.5% of Canadians aged 20–29 lived with their parents; in 2001, the figure had grown to 41%. In the United States the proportion of adults ages 20 to 34 living with their parents has increased from 9% in 1960 to almost 17% in 2000. However, US census data also suggest that the rate at which adult children have been living with parents has been steady since 1981.)The U.S. Census Bureau reported a 5 percent point increase in the number of young men (ages 24–34) living with their parents for the period between 2005 (14%) and 2011 (19%). For the same period, the number of young women living with their parents increased from 8% in 2005 to 10% in 2011.)

The coming of age of this generation coincide with the economic downturn starting with the collapse of the in 2000. This led to rising unemployment until 2004, the same time this generation was entering the workforce after high school or college graduation. Additionally, in the new economy, where globalisation-induced phenomena like outsourcing have eliminated many jobs,real wages have fallen over the last twenty years, and a college degree no longer ensures job stability. Additionally, with the recent economic crisis hitting much of the world, many young people were either laid off or could no longer afford to live on their own. Moving back home allows them the option of unpaid internships and additional schooling without the burden of paying rent at market rates (or paying rent at all).

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