Sewin Chan, New York University - Boomeranging Back to Parents Can Mean Moving Away From Opportunity

On New York University Week: Boomeranging back to live with your parents may be necessary, but not helpful in the long term.

Sewin Chan, associate professor of public policy, explores why.

Faculty Bio:

Sewin Chan is an economist whose research focuses on economic and financial risks faced by households as they interact with housing, labor and credit markets. She has studied mortgages and housing market risk, consumer credit behavior, pensions, work and retirement decisions, job loss, geographic mobility, and accessible housing.

Transcript:

When young adults boomerang, or move back to their parents, we often think of millennials living in basements. To move beyond this stereotype and get a granular look at who these young adults actually are, my colleagues and I developed a new method to identify boomerangers.

We used the American Community Survey that’s conducted each year by the Census Bureau. By tapping into this enormous dataset, we could finally link personal demographics to the actual geography of where boomerangers are moving to.

What we found is that for young adults who’ve already left home, the option to boomerang acts like insurance. When there’s a major life event—like a job loss, a break-up, or a new baby—the parental home can serve as a vital safety net.

But as we dug into the geographic data, we found a troubling spatial trend. Usually, in a healthy economy, people move toward opportunity. If you lose your job in a struggling town, you head to a thriving city. But boomerangers often do the exact opposite. Because they’re moving back to their parents, their destination is determined by where Mom and Dad happen to live, and not by job prospects. We found that young adults are frequently staying in weaker labor markets, or moving away from higher-opportunity places towards weaker ones.

And the data shows this burden isn’t shared equally. Black and Hispanic young adults, and those from lower-income backgrounds, are much more likely to boomerang back to areas with higher unemployment and lower wages. Moving home might provide immediate help—like free housing or childcare—but it can also damage their longer-term career prospects.

By identifying these patterns, we’ve revealed another channel through which disadvantage can be passed down from one generation to the next.

Read More:

[Taylor & Francis Online] - Moving back: Spatial and demographic differences in boomeranging to parents