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Young people in the European Union left their parents’ house at an average age of 26.2 years in 2024.
This figure is slightly down from 26.3 years in 2023, according to the latest Eurostat figures.
People in southern and eastern Europe wait the longest to leave the parental home. Croatia leads, at 31.3 years, followed by Slovakia at 30.9 years, Greece at 30.7 years, Italy at 30.1 years, and Spain at 30 years.
In contrast, young people leave the nest at a younger age in Finland (21.4 years), Denmark (21.7) and Sweden (21.9).
More than 80% of young people aged 16 to 29 in Croatia, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Poland, Greece and Ireland live with their parents or contribute to or benefit from the household income.
Many young people delay moving out due to rising housing costs, referred to by many as the cost-of-renting crisis.
“The housing crisis goes right to the centre of society and can do a lot of damage to democracy. We need to set the framework at the European level with subsidiarity as the guiding principle,” said Thomas Kattnig, co-rapporteur of the European Affordable Housing Plan, during a plenary session last week with the Commissioner for Energy and Housing, Dan Jørgensen.
This plan urges that affordable housing must be formally enshrined in EU primary law, and calls on the Commission to develop an action plan to enforce it.
Are people living in overcrowded conditions?
Across all EU countries, young people were more likely than the overall population to live in overcrowded households.
More than a quarter of young people in the EU lived in overcrowded households in 2024, a small increase of 0.5 percentage points compared to 2023.
Young people in Cyprus are the least likely to live in an overcrowded household (4.1%), while in Romania, this figure was the highest, at 58.3%.
The situation is also concerning in Latvia and Bulgaria, where more than half of young people live in overcrowded households, and in Lithuania, Italy, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, and Greece, where this type of living situation impacts more than a third.
EU citizens aged 15 to 19 years old are generally the most affected group when it comes to living in overcrowded homes.
How much of people’s wages is spent on rent?
Almost 10% of young people in the EU lived in households that spent 40% or more of their disposable income on housing in 2024.
Croatia (2.1%), Cyprus (2.8%) and Slovenia (3.0%) had the lowest housing cost overburden rate for young people, while Greece (30.3%) and Denmark (28.9%) had by far the highest.
Logically, the burden rises for those who shoulder the brunt of the cost. In some countries where young people tend to move out of their parental home sooner, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Finland, the housing cost burden for young people is higher.
Meanwhile, in countries where young people move out of the parental home later, such as Cyprus, Croatia and Italy, they tend to report lower levels of housing cost overburden.
