Bucks Blog: Need to Save Money? Move In With Relatives

Here’s a way to save money: Move in with relatives.

pewsocialtrends.org

Lots of Americans have done just that during the economic downturn, an analysis of census data from the Pew Research Center finds.

In fact, the trend helped touch off the largest increase in the number of Americans living in multigenerational households in modern history, the report says. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked to 51.4 million, from 46.5 million. Such households might include a couple and their parents or in-laws, adult children, younger children and grandchildren.

The unemployed, whose numbers are growing, are much more likely to live in multigenerational households — 25.4 percent did in 2009, compared with 15.7 percent of those with jobs.

Living in mixed-generation households appears to be keeping many out of poverty. Although their adjusted incomes over all are lower, Pew found, the poverty rate among people in multigenerational households is substantially smaller than the rate for those in other households — 11.5 percent in the mixed-generation households in 2009 versus 14.6 percent in other types of households.

Plus, the potential benefits of such living arrangements are the greatest for groups that have been most affected by the recession. Among the unemployed, the poverty rate in 2009 was 17.5 percent for those living in multigenerational households, compared with 30.3 percent for those living in other households.

Members of other economically vulnerable groups — young adults, Hispanics and blacks — who live in multigenerational households also experience sharply lower poverty rates than those in other households.

Have you ever lived with relatives? Did it help you save money?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a3452a4212ce7e7bb2b9933c56c7c228