【每天一篇经济学人】Family dynamics 家庭动态（2023年第34期

文章来源：《经济学人》May 20th 2023 期 Britain 栏目 Family dynamics

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Twenty-Three Years ago, a man in his 30s greeted the millennium “in despair. I’m a single parent, I live with my mother…I need a Life Plan.” Adrian Mole was fictitious: his bestselling comic diaries were a vessel for Sue Townsend’s anger at the inequalities and hypocrisies of late 20th- and early 21st-century Britain. But real Adrians are becoming more common.

23年前，一个30多岁的男人在 "绝望中 "迎接千禧年的到来。“我成长在一个单亲家庭，我和我母亲住在一起......我需要一个人生计划”。阿德里安.莫尔是虚构的人物：他的畅销漫画日记是作者苏.汤森对20世纪末21世纪初英国不平等和虚伪现象表达愤怒的载体。但现实中像阿德里安的人变得越来越普遍。

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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says the census of England and Wales in March 2021 found 4.9m adult children living with their parents, up from 4.2m in the 2011 survey. Most people in their early 20s, and more than one in ten of those in their early 30s, have yet to fly the nest (see chart). And that does not even count the Adrians: the tally includes only childless, single adults. Multi-family households (containing couples or lone parents under a shared roof) made up 1.4% of all households in 2021, up from 1.2% in 2011.

国家统计局表示，2021年3月英格兰和威尔士的人口普查发现，有490万成年子女与父母同住，高于 2011 年调查时的420万。大多数20岁出头的人，以及超过十分之一的30岁出头的人，还没有离开家（见图）。而且这还不算阿德里安一族：统计中只包括无子女的单身成年人。2021年，数代同堂家庭（包括共同居住的夫妇或单亲）占所有家庭的1.4%，高于2011年的1.2%。

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Granted, in some other countries grown-up children are even more reluctant to move out: two-thirds of young Italian adults live at home. But why are young Britons staying longer than they used to?

诚然，在其他一些国家，成年子女更不愿意搬出去：2/3的意大利年轻成年人住在家里。但是，为什么英国年轻人比以前呆在家的时间更长呢？

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There are many reasons why adults live with their parents: they are likelier to be unemployed, or to be students or carers, than those with places of their own. You might suppose that the covid-19 pandemic had caused more youngsters to stay or return home. You might suppose that the covid-19 pandemic had caused more youngsters to stay or return home. Nor does ethnicity seem to explain the shift. The share of multi-generational Asian households, the highest among any ethnic group, fell.

成年人与父母同住有很多原因：与那些有自己住处的年轻人相比，他们更可能是失业者，或者是学生或家庭护理员。你可能会认为，疫情导致更多的年轻人呆在家里或回到家里。也许，但英国国家统计局说，大约90%的成年人与父母同住至少一年，与2011年相同。种族因素似乎也不能解释这种转变。多代同堂的亚裔家庭的比例（在所有族裔中占比最高）下降了。

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The likeliest explanation is that many young adults cannot afford to buy or rent their own homes. In the first 20 years of the century, according to The Economist’s house-price index, British property prices almost doubled. According to Halifax, a lender, the average age of first-time buyers is now 32. Not surprisingly London, which has the priciest housing, also had the highest proportion of households with grown-up children: 26.8%. In the borough of Brent, in the north-west of the city, the share was almost one in three.

最可能的解释是，许多年轻人买不起或租不起自己的房子。根据《经济学人》的房价指数，在本世纪的前20年里，英国的房价几乎翻了一番。根据贷款机构Halifax的数据，现在首次购房者的平均年龄为32岁。毫不奇怪，伦敦是房价最高的城市，也是成年子女家庭比例最高的城市：26.8%。在伦敦西北部的布伦特区，这一比例几乎为33.3%。

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The squeeze on housing costs and living space is tightest in poor households. Not only are rents high, says Molly Broome of the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank, but for many years the provision of social housing—for which many young people on low incomes would have been eligible in the past—has failed to keep pace with demand. Local Housing Allowance (a rent subsidy), which was increased at the start of the pandemic in 2020, has been frozen since then.

住房成本上涨和居住空间缩小对于贫困家庭的影响最严重。英国智囊团"决议基金会"的莫莉.布鲁姆说，不仅租金高，而且多年来，社会住房的供应--过去许多低收入的年轻人有资格获得--现在未能跟上需求。当地住房津贴（一种租金补贴）在2020年疫情开始时有所增加，但此后一直被冻结。

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Lone parents were likelier than couples to have adult children at home. In London, more than half did. Homes with grown-up children are more likely to be classed as overcrowded—meaning, for example, that adults not in a couple, or more than two teenagers of the same sex, share a bedroom. In London almost one in four families with adult children was overcrowded, against one in 15 in north-east England.

单亲父母比双亲父母更有可能与成年子女同住，一半以上情况是如此。有成年子女的家庭更有可能“过度拥挤”--例如，这意味着未婚成年人，或两个以上的同性青少年，共用一间卧室。在伦敦，几乎1/4的成年子女家庭“过度拥挤”，而在英格兰东北部，这一比例为1/15。

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Since the census was taken, double-digit inflation, and especially rising rents and mortgage rates, have added to young people’s incentive to stay in the parental home while they save. They may—or may not—find comfort in what became of Adrian Mole. Townsend’s diarist did eventually find a home of his own: a converted pigsty. His parents lived in another, next door.

自人口普查以来，两位数的通货膨胀，特别是不断上涨的租金和房贷利率，这促使年轻人选择留在父母家中居住，并节省开支。他们可能会--也可能不会--从阿德里安.莫尔的故事中找到安慰。汤森的日记主人公最终找到了属于自己的家：一个由猪舍改建的房间。他的父母住在隔壁的另一间房里。