The average age of a young person moving out of their parents’ home in Ireland last year was almost 27-years-old.
That’s according to new figures from Eurostat which found that young people in the EU left their childhood home at an average age of 26.2 years.
Ireland was above this, with an average age of 26.8.
Eurostat said these numbers across Europe have fluctuated only modestly between a low of 26.1 seen six years ago and a high of 26.8 years in 2006. In Ireland, the average age people moved out of home in 2006 – around the peak of the Celtic Tiger – was 25.3 years. The crash and rebound of house prices and soaring rents over the past two decades appears to have had a limited impact on the trend.
Europe wide, southern and south eastern Europeans are the oldest leaving home at 31.3 years on average in Croatia, and aged 30 or older in Slovakia, Greece, Italy and Spain.
Last year, 9.7% of people aged between 15 and 29 in the EU lived in households where 40% or more of disposable income went on housing – regarded as the ‘overburden’ rate.
In Ireland that number was significantly lower, at 4.5%.
In Greece it was 30.3% and 28.9% in Denmark, while at the opposite end of the spectrum, the rate in Croatia was 2.1%.
In some of the countries where young people tend to move out earlier, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Finland, the housing cost overburden for young people is higher.
Countries where young people move out of the parental home later, like Cyprus, Croatia and Italy, tend to report lower levels of housing cost overburden – because households likely have multiple earners, it said.
However, in Greece, despite young people leaving home later, the housing cost overburden remains high.
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