Census: More young Americans moving back to mom and dad’s

With incomes dropping and poverty increasing, more young Americans returned to their parents' homes over the past two years, according to data released today by the Census.

Americans living in poverty hit a half-century high in 2010, median household incomes dropped for the third straight year, and the Census showed more young adults “doubling up,” moving in with their families or other households.

Doubled-up households jumped from 19.7 million in spring 2007 to 21.8 million this spring. Kevin Leicht, chairman of the University of Iowa's Sociology Department and director of the Iowa Social Science Resource Center, said those recent graduates may be at home awhile.

“When they move back home, it takes them awhile to actually move back out” Leicht said. “The effect of graduating in bad job market lingers. I think that could be with us for a while.”

The 46.2 million people living in poverty last year was up nearly 3 million from 2009's 43.6 million. That's the highest number in poverty since the Census began tracking the statistic in 1959, and the highest poverty rate since 1994, although the current poverty rate is 7.3 percentage points lower than in 1959.

The poverty line in 2010 was set at an income of $22,314 for a family of four.

Median household income has dropped 6.4 percent since 2007, the year before the most recent recession officially started, and is 7 percent lower than its peak in 1999. The U.S. median household earned $49,445 last year, compared with $50,599 in 2009.

Incomes have yet to recover from the most recent recession, continuing a pattern seen during the past 25 years.

“In past recessions the household number would actually recover,” Leicht said. “In recessions we've had since the 1980s, the household income hasn't recovered so robustly.”

Iowa's median household income last year was $49,177, down from $50,721 in 2009 but an increase over 2007's $48,908 (in 2010 dollars).

Iowa's 2010 poverty rate was 10.2 percent, or about 305,000 state residents.

Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 22.7 percent, according to calculations by the Census Bureau. It was followed by Louisiana, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New Mexico and Arizona. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 6.6 percent.

Nationally, there were 5.9 million young adults 25 to 34 living with their parents early this year, up from 4.7 million in 2007. That's 14.2 percent of that age group, an increase of more than 2 percent.

While those young adults living with their parents had an “official” poverty rate - taking into account the entire household's income - of 8.4 percent, 45.3 percent would be below the poverty line if they were living solely on their own income.

“They had no luck finding a job in many cases, or were the first to be let go,” said Anthony Paik, associate sociology professor at the University of Iowa. “Unemployment rates are definitely the highest among the young.”

Leicht noted graduates of a decade ago were already returning home at a higher rate than previous generations.

“It was still relatively hard to find entry-level jobs and when you found an entry-level job it was often at a place that had inflated housing prices,” he said. “This (current) set of students is moving home and they're jobless. The prior set of students was moving home, but they probably weren't jobless.”

The number of people without health insurance increased by 900,000 to 49.9 million, or 16.3 percent of Americans, a statistically insignificant increase.

The percentage of people covered by private health insurance decreased in 2010 to 64 percent, while the number of people covered by private health insurance was not statistically different from 2009, at 195.9 million. The percentage of people covered by private health insurance has been decreasing since 2001. The percentage and number of people covered by government health insurance increased to 31 percent

and 95 million in 2010 from 30.6 percent and 93.2 million in 2009.

The Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.