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Over 43% of 25 to 34-year-olds still live with their parents in Malaga province

Over 43% of 25 to 34-year-olds still live with their parents in Malaga province

In five years, there has been a six per cent rise in young people who have not flown the family nest and only 27% in this age group have children

NURIA TRIGUERO

Sunday, 11 April 2021, 14:39

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An increasing number of young people are being trapped in a type of endless adolescence, unable to take on the challenges of adult life. Finding work, becoming independent and forming a family are things which the new generations are having to put off for longer, not because they don't want the responsibility but because they don't have the necessary resources.

The increase in youth unemployment (over 50 per cent in Andalucía) and the cost of renting (which is particularly high in Malaga province) have a great deal to do with the delay in the age of emancipation shown in the latest Encuesta Continua de Hogares carried out by the INE. This survey into households shows that last year 43.3% of people aged 25 to 34 in Malaga were living with their parents. In the past five years this percentage has risen by six points (it was under 37% in 2015) and is higher than the national and Andalusian averages.

Remaining in the family nest is more common in the 25-34 age range. The INE survey shows that only 27% of these young people in Malaga have children and that another 13.6% live with a partner but have no children, 8.1% live alone, 4.2% live with people who are not their partners and 3.7% with relatives who are not their parents or their children.

Even in the next age range up, from 35 to 44, more than ten per cent of people in Malaga are still living with their parents.

Over 70,000 elderly people in the province live alone

  • Nearly half of the 160,000 people who live alone in Malaga province are over the age of 65. Specifically, the number is 70,700, and it has increased by nearly 10,000 people in just one year (almost 16%).

  • The majority of pensioners who have gone through the pandemic on their own are women there are 47,000 women aged over 65 in this situation in Malaga province (most of them widows), compared with 24,000 men.

More people living alone

The other major conclusion from this survey is that family sizes are becoming increasingly smaller, in line with the increase in people living alone.

In 2020 in Malaga province 1,674,400 people were living in 649,000 homes (the survey does not include those in residential homes, convents, barracks and other collective accommodation). The average size of family units is dropping year by year, although Malaga is still slightly above the national average of 2.50, with a figure for the province of 2.58 people per household.

Although the most common type of household in Malaga is still the nuclear family (a couple with one or more children), as this is one in every three homes, little by little the number of single-person households is growing. In the past five years the number of people who live alone has risen by 6,100 and now accounts for 24.6% of the total number of households.

On the other hand, there are now 9,100 fewer nuclear families than there were five years ago. The number of single-parent homes has also reduced (from 78,000 to 70,000) and there are more couples without children (from 124,000 to nearly 129,000). The ageing population and fall in the birth rate are the trends underlying these changes in the map of households.

The INE survey also looks at type of occupancy and shows that renting is still a minority in Malaga: only 17% of households are in rented apartments. However, the incidence is gradually rising: from 2019 to 2020 the number of families who were renting their homes rose from 107,000 to 112,000.

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