A school pickup on a Tuesday, a call about an elderly parent’s prescription change on a Wednesday. For a majority of Americans in their 40s, family responsibility now runs in both directions at once, and Pew Research has just measured how many of them are living it. Researchers call them the sandwich generation, the sort of name that suggests it was coined by someone who needed to finish before lunch. The term dates to 1975 and has since acquired a club sandwich variant for people in their 50s and 60s with parents, adult children and grandchildren all in play. The arithmetic behind it is stark. The typical first-time homebuyer is now a decade older than in the 1980s, a year in a private nursing home costs more than most households earn, and the share of adults living with their parents runs from almost nobody in one Midwestern city to a third of adults in two California metros. The short answer to why grown children move back in is money. The longer answer, from a survey that asked the parents instead, is that for a sizeable share of them it was never about money at all. And the sandwiched, it turns out, report being slightly happier with family life than everyone else. Getty Images (not the actual photo) A 2025 survey from Pew Research Center found that roughly 54% of U.S. adults in their 40s belong to what researchers deem the sandwich generation. No other group has a higher share. Nearly 45% of people in their 50s fit this definition, as do almost 25% in their 30s and roughly one in ten in their 60s. Across the U.S. the sandwich generation accounts for about a quarter of all adults, a 2 point increase from the last time Pew Research Center measured it in 2021. The change is gradual and most easily visible among the cohort in their 40s, as their own parents pass the age of 65. Most of these adults also do not yet have an adult child. Differences between groups appear as well. 31% Asian and 30% of Hispanic adults are “sandwiched” compared to 23% of White and 21% of Black adults. Still, it’s important to also look at gaps in the data. Just because someone lives with their elderly parents doesn’t mean that the adult children are automatically their caregivers. Despite appearances, the experience isn’t even always seen as negative. The 2021 survey found that almost half the “sandwiched” adults reported a high level of satisfaction with their family life. Half doesn’t seem like much, but only 43% of the “non-sandwiched” cohort reported being very satisfied. So why do some adults decide to forgo independence and move back in with their parents? The short explanation is money. One thing sandwiched and non-sandwiched adults have in common is a dissatisfaction with their personal finances. Only 17% of both groups report feeling satisfied with their income. In 1971, only 8% of adults between 25 and 34 lived with their parents. By 2023, this number rose to 18%. Young adults see it as a way to escape the rising cost of housing. The median first time homebuyer in the U.S. is now in their 40s, compared with the 1980s, where it was folks in their 20s. Rising housing costs are not uniform. Only 3% of young adults in Lincoln, Nebraska, live with their parents, compared with almost 33% in two California metro areas. The number of Americans living in multigenerational households has quadrupled since 1971: 59.7 million in 2021, according to Pew’s analysis of Census data, against 14.5 million five decades earlier. Fewer older Americans are entering nursing homes or similar care settings, down to 3% from 6% in the 1990s. As with housing, the price of care has risen to the point where families simply can’t afford to outsource it. In 2024, the median annual cost of a home health aide was $77,800, and a private nursing home room ran to $127,750. Those figures might help explain why relatives and not paid providers often have to fill in the caretaking gap. Reactions are mixed, but actually lean towards positive. While a quarter of adults in multigenerational households report that it’s stressful most of the time, nearly twice their number say it’s rewarding. Eduardo Ramos (not the actual photo) The simple version of the story is that young adults move back to save money. But in a survey by AARP and the Financial Health Network, 14% of parents living with an adult child said receiving financial help themselves was a reason, and 28% said they simply preferred living with others. If it sometimes feels like everyone has moved back in with their parents, there is a precedent. In 2020 52% of adults aged 18-29 lived with their parents, the first such majority since the Great Depression. This arrangement’s effects differ based on who you ask. Adult children were more likely than their parents to report that stress (31% versus 18%), and more likely to say the arrangement helps their finances (53% versus 29%). Milhad (not the actual photo) An AARP analysis of a national financial-health survey found that adults 40 and older with an adult child at home were less likely to report living comfortably or doing okay financially (57% versus 70%) and to rate their mental health as excellent or very good (48% versus 56%). The authors caution that this does not show co-residence causes the gap, since the circumstances that lead families to share a home may themselves affect money and health. It’s also important to remember that multigenerational households were very much the norm. The family dynamics of the sandwich generation are in many ways a comeback. The share of older adults in multigenerational homes fell through the 1900s, hit a low of 17% in 1990, and has since risen to 22%. Getty Images (not the actual photo) Is the American sandwich unusual? Not especially. The EU average age for leaving the parental home was 26.2 in 2024, but Eurostat's figures show a wide spread. Averages ran above 30 in Croatia (31.3), Slovakia (30.9), Greece (30.7), Italy (30.1) and Spain (30.0), and were just 21.4 in Finland, 21.7 in Denmark and 21.9 in Sweden, a gap of nearly a decade. Housing costs are only part of the explanation. Young people in countries that leave earlier, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Finland, tend to face a heavier housing cost burden than those in countries that leave later, such as Croatia, Cyprus and Italy. Greece is a notable exception. Pew measures something different (the share of 25- to 34-year-olds living at home, 18% in the U.S. in 2023), so the two sets of figures can't be ranked head to head. But the U.S. has its own spread, with metro-area shares ranging from about 3% to 33%. Getty Images (not the actual photo) So what might come next? The squeeze (“being sandwiched”) is likely to shift older and last longer. The U.S. Census Bureau expects that all baby boomers will be older than 65 by 2030 and that older adults will outnumber children in 11 states, up from just three in 2020, those being Maine, Vermont and retirees paradise, Florida. The aforementioned growing age of first-time homebuyers is expected to keep rising. If first homes and financial independence keep arriving later, more parents could find themselves among the 23% supporting both a minor and an adult child while also looking after a parent. Multigenerational living will probably keep growing, particularly where housing and care costs stay high. That may increase demand for homes with separate quarters for relatives, though how quickly builders and local zoning rules adapt is uncertain. Veii Rehanne Martinez Smaller families may concentrate their caregiving. Fewer children per household can eventually mean fewer siblings to share responsibility for an aging parent, which leaves fewer hands holding up the same sandwich. Workplaces and policymakers will likely face more pressure to respond. AARP's survey found that many working caregivers lack supportive benefits, especially the 18 million among them who are hourly workers, so paid-leave programs and employer caregiver support are natural places for change. Much will depend on housing markets, health trends, fertility and the economy. So far, Pew's figures suggest incremental change rather than upheaval: the sandwiched share of all adults moved from 23% to 25% over four years. For people in their 40s, though, the arithmetic of midlife increasingly includes two generations at once.
