Young Americans are living with their parents instead of saving money rather than living with their parents to save money.
What happens when they have children? Where will their adult children live? In their parents tiny 2 room apartments?
Basically, the full effects of the declining net income of adult Americans is being masked by people living off the accumulated wealth of their parents (both consuming their houses and getting hand-outs). Which implies that there's cliff that the American lifestyle will fall off at some point and then things will be ugly even in comparison to now.
The younger generation is simply not having children at the high rate of previous generations.
Anecodotally, most of my mid 30's friends have either 0 or 1 child, a few that got started earlier have two.
On the other hand, the millions of legal and illegal immigrants, especially from Latin America, are keeping the birth rate up. They do, in fact, many times live in much more crowded conditions. I have met a few Hispanic immigrants in my area as I speak Spanish, and in each case, they lived in single family homes with multiple families / generations.
I think three-generation households have been somewhat common throughout most of history, even in the USA (although admittedly probably not in the sort of high-rise apartment buildings where many people live now).
Young Americans are living with their parents instead of saving money rather than living with their parents to save money.
What happens when they have children? Where will their adult children live? In their parents tiny 2 room apartments?
Basically, the full effects of the declining net income of adult Americans is being masked by people living off the accumulated wealth of their parents (both consuming their houses and getting hand-outs). Which implies that there's cliff that the American lifestyle will fall off at some point and then things will be ugly even in comparison to now.