The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported on Tuesday that 62 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were living at home in 2015, which isn’t much of a difference over the past decade: in 2005, 64 percent still lived at home.
But what has changed is that young people are living with their parents for longer periods of time than they did 40 years ago, which could be due to longer periods of studying, according to Spiegel.
There is also a stark difference between young women and men: 56 percent of women compared to 68 percent of men lived at home last year.
“Daughters often have fewer freedoms, which can increase their motivation to take to their heels,” Hamburg child and youth psychologist Michael Thiel told Spiegel in an interview.
Thiel added that parents also should take the blame for “not raising their child to be able to manage without them.”
And for young men, where they live is a big determining factor. Nearly 80 percent of young men living in towns of less than 10,000 people still lived with their parents – nearing percentages seen in Spain – while less than half (45 percent) of young men in cities of half a million or more still lived at home.
Still, compared to the rest of Europe, Germany seems to do comparatively better when it comes to getting young people out on their own two feet.
According to the latest Eurostat figures updated last week, the number of young adult Germans under 35 still living at home only slightly increased over the past five years: 43.1 percent, compared to 41.8 percent in 2010.
This is lower than the EU average of about 48 percent, but places Germany behind the UK and France (both about 34 percent), as well as Scandinavian countries Norway, Sweden and Denmark, which are all around 20 percent.
There were also differences between men and women in the Eurostat figures. More than half (52.1 percent) of German men under 35 still lived at home last year, compared to just one third (33.4 percent) of German women.
And whereas the number of young adult women living at home decreased slightly by 2 percent since the 2008 financial crisis, the number of young men living at home increased by about 2 percent.
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