Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, ushering in a season filled with friends, family and food. But this year, in many households, extended family has to go no farther than the next room to meet up with their loved ones.
There has been an increase in multi-generational living over the last few years, which affects the need for multi-generational households, a recent Trulia blog explained:
The last few years have seen an increase in multigenerational living. Young adults became far more likely to live with their parents during the recession than before and haven’t really started to move out. On the other side of the life cycle, seniors – specifically adults 65 and older – are also more likely to live with relatives than in the recent past. That means fewer Americans today need to go “over the river and through the woods” to see Grandma and Grandpa for Thanksgiving than they did 20 years ago.
However, the pending future of your in-laws living with you depends heavily on whether your elders were born in the U.S. or abroad.
According to Trulia, 25% of foreign-born seniors live their parents, compared to only 6% of native-born seniors.
But just because your parents were born out of the country does not mean they are about to move in. Taking it a step further, the likelihood of them living with you also greatly varies by the country of birth.
India, Vietnam and Haiti rank as the top three countries for the share of seniors living with relatives at 47%, 44% and 41%, respectively.
On the other side, the U.S., Germany and Canada fell to the bottom of the list, with only 5% to 6% of elder adults living with younger generations.
As a whole, Trulia explained that demand for multi-generational households is expected to rise as more seniors start living with their families.
And while Thanksgiving is a time for meeting up with the folks, the travel time for a large number of families has been cut down from a plane ride to a simple walk around the pantry.
