Last year 17.9 percent of people 18 and older lived in someone else's household, up from 16.0 percent in 2007, prior to the start of the economic recession, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.
Specifically, 41.2 million adults in 2011 lived in a household in which they were neither the householder, the householder's spouse nor the householder's cohabiting partner. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of these additional adults increased by 1.9 million, from 17.3 percent to 17.9 percent of adults.
In recent years, shared households have increased as a proportion of all U.S. households. In 2007, prior to the start of the economic recession, 19.8 million or 17.6 percent of households were shared. Nationally, shared households peaked in 2010 at 22.2 million or 19.4 percent of all households and declined to 22.0 million or 19.2 percent of households in 2011.
In the District of Columbia, California, Florida, Hawaii, New York and Nevada, 20 percent or more of the population 18 and older lived in someone else's household in 2011, the highest shares among the states and the state equivalents.
The number and percentage of these additional adults increased in 40 states between 2007 and 2011 with larger increases in the South. Florida experienced a 4.4 percentage point increase to lead all states, followed by Nevada (3.9 percentage points).
In 2011, more than one in three young adults 18 to 24 were residents in someone else's household; the same was true of more than 30 percent of those 25 to 34. For the latter group, the share of additional adults increased by 4.5 percentage points since 2007, compared to a 1.7 percentage-point increase for those 18 to 24.
States in which more than one-third of young adults 25 to 34 were additional adults included California, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey and New York.
Almost half of all additional adults were children of the householder. Additional adults can also be parents of the householder (9.6 percent), siblings (8.1 percent) and other relatives (16.0 percent). Nonrelatives accounted for the remaining 19.2 percent. The share of additional adults who were children of the householder increased by 1.7 percentage points between 2007 and 2011, while the percentage who were parents or nonrelatives declined.
Many of the adults sharing a household with relatives would have been in poverty if they had been living on their own. The official poverty rate for additional adults (based on family income) in 2011 was 15.8 percent. However, their individual poverty rate was 55.5 percent. (This "individual" poverty measure looks at what the poverty rate would be if the additional adults lived alone.)
