Four out of five under-30s in Spain stuck in the family home

FOUR out of five under 30s in Spain still live in the family home and nearly one in three 30 to 34-years olds, according to a new report.

Figures from the Youth Council Emancipation Observatory relating to the first six months of the year show the proportion of young Spaniards who have flown the nest and set up home on their own is the lowest since 2002.

“Leaving home is mission impossible”, commented the youth council vice-president Maria Rodriguez at the report presentation

“For more than 80 per cent of young people, it is not that we don’t want to want to leave our parents’ homes, it’s that we are not able to.”

She blamed the low level of emancipation in Spain on many under-30s being employed on temporary work contracts and having low salaries, as well as on a sharp increase in the cost of renting: eight per cent in 2019.

The maximum size home someone aged 16 to 29 in Spain could reasonably expect to rent is 25.4 square metres, based on not allocating more than 30 per cent of income to housing, report author sociologist Joffre Lopez pointed out.

However, the study shows that young people who want to rent on their own have to shell out an average of 94.4 per cent of their net income, up from 88.9 per cent last year.

In the case of buying a property, the initial amount of a monthly mortgage repayment is typically 62.4 per cent of a young person’s earnings.

There are 6,675,431 16 to 29 year-olds in Spain, of which 1,238,697 have left home. Of the 666,971 households in those age group, 198,506 are people living on their own.

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Written by

Cathy Elelman

Cathy Elelman is the local writer for the Costa de Almeria edition of the Euro Weekly News.

Based in Mojacar for the last 21 years, Cathy is very much part of the local community and is always well and truly up on all the latest news and events going on in this region of Spain.

Her top goals are to do the best job she can informing the local English-speaking community, visitors to the area and the wider world about about the news in Almeria, to learn something new every day, and to embrace very new challenge this fast-changing world brings her way.

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