Pop culture may depict adult children living at home as a drain on their parents’ money, privacy and sanity. But in reality, adult children who move back home — known as boomerang children — don’t derail their parents’ retirement. New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research dispels the notion that boomerang kids are a burden. In fact, there may be some positives to having Junior come back home, researchers found.
“Boomerang children have been portrayed in the media and by some financial organizations as a monetary drain jeopardizing parental retirement, the premise being that parents may need to delay retirement if they deplete their savings to support co-resident children,” the research said. The study looked at a sample of 51-year-old to 69-year-old parents. It defined a boomerang kid as an adult child under the age of 30 who returns to the parental home without being a caregiver to the parents. The share of U.S. adult children living with their parents has increased since the 1960s. In 2020, during the pandemic, about one-third of children between ages 18 and 34 lived with their parents, with men and 18-24 year-olds, respectively, more likely to live at home than women and 25- 34 year-ol …