Downward mobility is almost entirely caused by housing costs, which are a self-inflicted problem. We don't, as a matter of intentional policy, build enough housing.

I live in an expensive area and I'm always shocked by how many of my friends who cannot afford to buy a home (or even a condo) are NIMBYs. These are people in their 20s through 40s who have been earning since college, can't afford to buy, yet get annoyed whenever there's new construction that "alters the character of the neighborhood". Talk about false consciousness. I can at least understand people who own a home feeling this way.

Agreed, this feels so obviously a housing cost problem to me.

> We don't, as a matter of intentional policy, build enough housing.

If actual number of houses was the problem, house prices would not be increasing in areas of population decline. It's existing houses being repriced upward by speculation that makes them unaffordable.

Anyone with 60 seconds of free time can trivially see that your claims hold no water.

Simply Google for cities/areas with declining population, choose one, look up average housing prices there over the last 10 years or so, see how they've changed, correct the figures for inflation, and you'll see that in almost all cases inflation-adjusted prices are lower today in those places than they were 10 years ago.

It's not number of houses, it's number of houses where people want to live.

"house prices would not be increasing in areas of population decline" -> the causation could be running backwards: a family of 2 (maybe 2 retired people with accumulated wealth) can outcompete with a young family of 4 for the same unit, that drives prices up and population down. I'm not saying this is the case, but decreasing population not being associated with decreasing housing prices does not mean that increasing housing prices is not caused by housing scarcity

are these areas with declining populations and rising housing prices increasing the number of houses? it could be that the population declines because no one can afford to live there however it's still a desirable area so prices remain high. cities like Austin are seeing reduction in housing prices despite population increase due to construction of new housing.

That only covers a portion of the population. Don't forget the middle of nowhere towns that refuse to tax their citizens (but eat grant money like pigs) and refuse to allow new housing. All of this is essentially being done to maximize property value and keep new people out. This is why people are moving to cities in the US. Not a desire, but a need in order to make ends meet and get on the property ladder.

A big political problem with YIMBYism is that almost by definition it will take years to see the effects.

If you champion it as a politician, there's a very large chance you get all the flack for new developments, but the next guy gets all the credit for affordable housing.

Texas seems to be the only place that actually does it, and I honestly have no explanation for why.

Whenever I see a claim that "x% of adults do y", my brain goes:

- "x% of what? what is the denominator?". Without that number, the claim is meaningless. - surely it cannot be the entire population, so it has to be a survey. - how many people participated in the survey? what was the distribution?

Here is that info for this study. I found this in the PDF version of the study report [0] referred to at the end of the Northwestern page [1].

> Methodology The Harris Poll conducted a total of 4,375 online interviews among the general U.S. adult (18+) population between January 5th and January 21st, 2026. Included in this overall total is a sample of 816 High-Net-Worth individuals (those with total household investable assets, excluding pensions, retirement plans and property, greater than $1,000,000).

[0] https://filecache.mediaroom.com/mr5mr_nwmutual/179168/2026%2...

[1] https://news.northwesternmutual.com/planning-and-progress-st...

> "conducted a total of 4,375 online interviews"

How? Mechanical Turk? Ads? This sort of survey is biased toward people who click on lots of stuff.

> Whenever I see a claim that "x% of adults do y", my brain goes

Would that everyone employed this level of skepticism before commenting on figures.

> (those with total household investable assets, excluding pensions, retirement plans and property, greater than $1,000,000).

Am I reading this wrong, is this about trust fund kids?

You are reading gp’s comment correctly as it was written, but it omits the next line in the source study:

> Data for the general U.S. population (including the High Net Worth oversample) were weighted to Census targets for education, age, gender, race/ethnicity, region and household income.

They oversampled in major markets where they work and in high-net-worth populations (who they service), but their claims are for the overall US adult population.

Oversampling like this is pretty routine in survey research. It improves the precision of any subgroup analyses you might want to do, and, to a first approximation, it doesn’t tend to bias the weighted overall-population claims in one direction or another.

I think about it like Google Earth or something. I happen to have much-higher-res imagery of London than of the Cotswolds. That doesn’t mean my view, when zoomed out to “the whole United Kingdom,” is necessarily misleading. It does mean I can additionally make more detailed claims about Piccadilly Circus than about the sheep fields or whatever.

How you define “rely”.

I’ve certainly seen trust fund kids who’s success is anchored on “daddy gave me a sweet job at his company” and others who’d be dead or in prison if it wasn’t for the constant money poured into the legal system by their parents.

There’s a huge spectrum. I’m mid 40s and my wife grew up much wealthier than I did. We have done quite well, but I I’m a bit frugal, like to save, despise waste and excess, and therefore don’t like traveling like they do. I like traveling but all the fancy upgraded experiences at every turn is what I refuse to spend money on. But we don’t go without, we “rely” on my in laws to upgrade our travel (or that’s how my wife has structured the relationship with them, they pay for everything and we cover the drinks is basically how it works out). I’m not a huge fan of it but they don’t care and it keeps my wife off my back lol, so whatever. We travel with them a lot but even when we don’t I think my wife uses their card to pay for it. It’s between them is what I say, I don’t want to be a part of it as it feels like we’re taking advantage of them but apparently they’re fine with it. Is this fitting the definition of “rely” because it’s nonessential

> total of 4,375 online interviews

> Included in this overall total is a sample of 816 High-Net-Worth

Looks like about 1/5 are in the trust fund kid category.

Sure seems like it if you are excluding property.

If you look into Italy its like 60% to 70%.

Europe in general maybe outside of some CEE, DACH, Nordics/Benelux is pretty fucked for the youth. Without help from parents or inherited housing you're fucked. You get American CoL with African wages. Joking of course, but you get the point.

Typically surveys are adjusted for sampling biases before reporting. That appears to be the case here. So there is usually some attempt to account for the biases in the sampled population.

The impulse to ask "what population was sampled?" is good but its not always a straight line from there to "these results directly reflect that sampling bias."

In fact, from the page you posted: "Data for the general U.S. population (including the High Net Worth oversample) were weighted to Census targets for education, age, gender, race/ethnicity, region and household income. A full methodology is available."

I would presume that the headline number attempts to account for sampling bias.

I agree with you - there’s usually some adjustment for sampling bias, and this study says it is matching Census targets. But I had to go three levels down to see that info before I derive any meaning from the number.

My concern is that headlines like “x% of adults do y” get repeated without anyone (sometimes even journalists writing the article) seeing the methodology or nuance behind them. Context matters.

Still, it lowers the resolution of the results if you have to throw out a significant portion of the interviews.

You're not just throwing them out though, those responses do have input. Their input is just weighted.

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2018/01/26/how-different...

When I was a kid, we never had a ton of extra money, but my parents were very supportive-- they paid for most of my college expenses, for example. Their outlook was that us kids shouldn't have to work-- "school is your job". (However, both my sister and I _did_ have jobs while in school).

However, I never _asked_ my parents for money. I had a good education and a well-paying job, and was able to turn IPO money into a house down payment. In the end, we struggled to close the deal, and my wife and I both asked to borrow money from our parents. Of course they were happy to do so, but I still remember it as feeling so hard to do -- just something that I "shouldn't" have to do. And, of course, it also made me reflect on those who didn't have family support to fall back on, let alone jobs that paid well.

For anecdata, what decade did you borrow in?

I have never asked my parents for money. They have had to resort to trickery (asking for bank details for some passport stuff) to send me money. I hope to be able to do the same for my kid.

The question that was ask in the survey was: How financially independent you currently feel from your parents (meaning you could support yourself without them if needed)

I understand that YC is questioning the results of the survey. The YC community is very privileged; and i bet, if we do the same survey in this community, 20% or less of adults rely on their parents.

The hacker news crowd is also more than just Americans. Some of us live in welfare states and/or societies with strong trade unions, which we know we can rely on instead, if we ever come to a situation where we need it.

Also, the first thought I had was "what %age of adults are 18-30". Not that a 30yo should be dependent on their parents but I'd assume that people answering yes skew younger. And to your point about YC, that's also a young skewed demographic.

I also thought that YC might be younger, but then i remembered that most (successful) founders are 40+. Do we know something about YC demographics? Aside from the fact that it's obvious that a great many of them come from STEM fields. I did not find anything about it.

Haha. I had the opposite thought. If they are very privileged, wouldn’t they rely more? I guess there is privileged you make yourself and privileged you are born into and then more easily make for yourself. But if you are the latter and can support yourself, would you really then do it entirely on your own and not still benefit/rely from/on your parents? I’m not sure (and yes I am including family vacations, connections, and other kinds of arrangements).

I've asked myself the same question. And I've come to the conclusion that there's a difference between feeling independent and being independent.

Like: I built a $50 billion business with my own hands. Okay, I got the first $2 billion from my parents. Okay, I got the first $2 billion for every business from my parents until I was successful.

Yeah right? I used to live in nicer/upper area and like everybody got help from their parents for house, if not outright given to them.

The figure might be misleading. It might not be.

Either way, the idea that the natural and normal state of affairs is that every person can go out into the world and be a perfectly self sufficient but comfortable atomized economic unit without support from their family or society is deeply flawed.

This wasn't the norm for most of human history, and it isn't the norm globally today.

It might, however, be a nice thing to aspire to, no? Economic self-sufficiency doesn't have to imply atomization, I think.

It's an interesting question.

We have a group that promotes a "living wage" construct in Tompkins County that pushes the unquestioned assumption that people who are working in the lowest paying jobs can live 100% alone. It's not something I want to challenge directly, but... It reminds me of discussions about the minimum wage in the late 1980s when it was common for teenagers to work at supermarkets and fast food markets. I think the public never really understood how the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit

was specifically intended to help out people who were raising a family with low incomes that was economically efficient and how there is some logic to people who are working in low income jobs qualifying for food stamps, it is not just a way "Wal-Mart is stealing for us."

e.g. part of "affordability" is keeping costs low and as much leftie folks want to sweep it under the rug there is a lot of internal class conflict in groups such as women: like the Sheryl Sandberg type definitely benefits from exploiting less wealthy women to do child care work for them and child care is basically problematic because the child care worker is not productive enough to put their own children in child care without subsidy and you don't get the Fordist scenario where the auto line worker can easily afford to own one of the cars they make.

I am not sure - in my experience, I've observed that the more money you have the less people care about relations (their social circle becomes smaller) and healthy co-dependency reduces. This is more true of the young. Human nature tends to be selfish, which is not conducive for a healthy society. Young people becoming financially-independent at an early age may negate opportunities for self-introspection on that - without the struggle to earn a good living, many fail to understand the value of money and good relationships, which often lead to costly and immature decisions.

I don't agree with your characterization of "human nature". I mostly disagree that there is any such thing, and to the extent that there is, it seems to me that it is more like: cooperative, altruistic, empathic within the in-group, aggressive, selfish and uncooperative with the out-group.

The great work of human civilization is to expand the size of the in-group.

Look at the comment above, the sample is from really wealthy parents, not the median income in the US, so I'm sure that skews the data.

No, it mentioned 816 out of more than 4500 respondents had net worth over $1M.

That's quite different to your claim.

It is something to aim for though. The kid feels good about themselves and the parents can enjoy their hard earned money to have a banging retirement. My parents won’t stop traveling. They’ve been to something like 50 countries over the last 5-7 years.

Slavery and massive wealth disparity was also the norm for most of human history, but just like generational wealth transfer, that doesn't mean it's equitable (or sustainable). Personally, I'm concerned that this will lead to greater wealth transfer from poor to rich and the subsequent dissolution of social norms that hold countries and cultures together. But I don't really care, I have nothing to lose here.

My 20-something son is living with us but he does pay (some) rent.

I half expect to have to apologize for this, like when I was growing up people would think you are a loser if you were in this situation. Today people think we are really smart and the people who are paying more rent than they can afford to live alone that are losing.

That's the way it is where I live, too. It might not be "fair game", but if people really want to help their kids, they should do everything in their power to get them into the housing market ASAP.

When I grew up, that was seen as pampering kids. They'd never "learn" how to be financially responsible, etc. if they always received help.

But, let's be honest, in many places the housing market is now so expensive that people could be saving for 5-10 years just to afford the down payment. And by the time they have enough, the market will have appreciated even more, so they have to save for even longer. I have peers that got into the housing market 20 years ago with help from parents, and their properties are now worth 5x - 8x of what they paid.

I can’t understand morally or financially how can parents charge anything of their children. Not judging it, just honestly can’t understand it. Isn’t it the parents’ responsibility to build the foundation for their children and keep building it until it’s there? I am viewing it from a moral angle where it’s the parents’ selfish choice to have a child so they must take full responsibility until a child is or feels that they can be independent.

In my house the >8 years old the kids start paying rent. They get paid for normal house work (minimum wage). Rent is ~$300/month. I pay the kid minimum wage for chores because that is work and work should be rewarded. They pay me rent. That rent and other expenses are ~80% of their pay. Some must go to savings and "taxes". They have to keep books as well. The rest is theirs.

I know other fathers that charge their adult children rent, keep the money, and then gift it to them at the wedding or to help them buy a house.

I understand that such a game of life might be beneficial for a child. But I would like to understand the reasoning to do that with an adult.

> I know other fathers that charge their adult children rent, keep the money, and then gift it to them at the wedding or to help them buy a house.

This looks like a game which should have ended by the time a child is an adult.

I am raising a very young child so I am very concerned about the future and constantly thinking what's the right way to raise him.

I may have ended up that way if I hadn’t gotten into software as a teenager. Luckily a did and the timing was right for me to make some sort of decent career out of it.

I did live independently prior to going into software, but it sucked and was fragile and likely would have fallen apart long term. I also doubt I could find a similar living situation as a young man with no credit or much money to his name. Even the mom and pop landlords use management companies that run you through a black box for approval/rejection with little room for negotiation.

> Even the mom and pop landlords use management companies that run you through a black box for approval/rejection with little room for negotiation.

Rental approvals are ridiculous. We're renting an apartment while we remodel our house.

We've taken out mortgages, refi'd mortgages, and (by now) taken out 3 HELOCs in a row (2 of them subsequently closed as we needed to re-file for more $). While there's a lot of paperwork involved, it feels pretty easy. "Promise to pay us back? Cool!"

Filling out apartment rentals was awful. The rejections, the tiny paper forms asking you about creditors and bank accounts, how much money you owe each of them every month, personal references, "supervisor's phone number", have you ever been to jail, ever failed to pay rent for any reason, previous landlords' contact info. Look, I get that rent is an unsecured obligation (vs a mortgage), but every step of it was gross and accusatory.

33% of GenX is still depending on their parents? That's shocking... I'm at the young end of GenX at 49yo. So, a slice of the population that is fast approaching retirement age is still reliant on their septuagenarian or octogenarian parents for money? Wow.

yeah that's ridiculous. I'm 50 and fully support my MIL (she lives in my garage apartment) and my sister fully supports our mom (she lives with my sister). The boomers i know are completely financially dependent on their children.

Maybe you're not familiar with the entire economy? There are a lot of households that depend on retirement checks of the oldest members and households that don't have traditional work but may have family homes, businesses and farms still in the name of the oldest relatives. Different groups would have different results as far as whether they will inherit independence or become destitute if parents die.

17% of generally retired people are relying on the retirement checks of their parents ? Really ?

It's plausible if it's an inheritable nest egg amount. Though I agree, seems unlikely.

Are they counting free housing as 'financial support'? A number of states have perverse incentives to delay the legal transfer of a home as long as possible, like with CA's Prop 13.

Wait until you see the homeownership statistics, or the average age of homebuyers.

I think the word "rely" is doing some heavy lifting here. Still being on your parent's family phone plan doesnt mean youd be destitute if they werent helping you out.

I went to the source[1] referenced by the article and found the exact question. It took about 90 seconds.

"How financially independent you currently feel from your parents (meaning you could support yourself without them if needed)"

1: https://news.northwesternmutual.com/planning-and-progress-st...

According to that 17% of boomers+ are dependent on their parents. Just looking at boomers, that is around 70 on average. How many people that age even have parents still alive, let alone financially depend on them?

I'd speculate (based on a study I've recently been made aware of) about 17%.

Boomers can be trust fund babies too.

Not only that, if you're a single boomer with a living parent and neither of you have much other incomes its probably better to cohabitate in that old family house that was paid off in the 90s and share what little benefits you both receive.

I don't know, that one doesn't seem as benign as your making it out to be. I would say if you're having your parents subsidize your phone bill you're still not technically living on your own.

Cell phone companies incentivize this, though. It's a better deal for both the parents and children (often 50%) with no difference in service

theres plenty of people making 6 figures at 25 that still have their parents pay their phone bill because they get a family discount. i dont get your point

>> Still being on your parent's family phone plan doesnt mean youd be destitute if they werent helping you out.

I think there's some important things like this that should be considered. In the late 90's early aughts, I didn't need a laptop, smartphone and 24/7 internet access with 1GB download speeds or half the technological stuff kids need these days to be a contributing member of society.

Now those are all standard items for kids growing up. When I was in college in 2000, life was pretty easy. I paid $350/month for rent, cable, heat and landline phone. That was literally my entire financial costs for the month. Beer, going out to the bars, random things here and there? Easy to cover when you're making $10/hour working 35 hours a week.

Now? Your basic needs will consistently run $1,500 for all of the stuff you need to function into today's society. Having your parents covering some of that in order for you to live on your own I think is not abnormal any more.

As a Gen Xer, we had it really good. I've started to realize kids these days are put at a massive disadvantage because we require everything to be accessible via the internet and smartphones.

> $350/month [ 2000 ]

> $1500/month [ 2026 ]

CPI inflation would suggest that the current cost ought to be about $692. So if it really costs $1500 to cover the things you've mentioned (noticeabley absent: student loans, health insurance, car payments) then either our society is deeply fucked or your list has changed or your estimates are wrong or your memory is wrong or all of the above.

> CPI inflation would suggest that the current cost ought to be about $692.

Rent alone will probably blow that. I live in a burnt out rust belt shithole city and I’m struggling to understand how rent is this high. I pay a good bit more than $692 to live in a slum just outside the ghetto right now and I have to feel gracious for that. It’s closer to what I paid in a decent middle class neighborhood in Florida. That was only 5-6 years ago.

This is in a city where the best people can say about it is: “well it’s cheaper”.

Hell when I lived in South Carolina from 2017-2019. My apartment there was closer to the stated inflation figure, but this was for a place that regularly flooded the downstairs neighbors and left me for weeks without AC in the peak of summer because of careless management.

Still not as bad as business rents. I’ve seen downtown business close because they’re being made to be $7000 for a shitty 100 year old property surrounded by condemned properties.

Let me suggest the problem: CPI inflation suggests a rough doubling of basic living costs. How many jobs can you point to that are paying 2x in 2026 what they were paying in 2000?

There are some. But the data seems to suggest that the majority do not.

Please tell me more.

It is acknowledged as not covering some costs that affect many people severely. But that does not by itself make it a bullshit number.

The link to their study is much more interesting: https://news.northwesternmutual.com/planning-and-progress-st...

These numbers are a nice snapshot, but I see no comparison to historical numbers in the article. I know many families who have had intergenerational support happening from older to younger and vice versa.

The post WW2 boom in America was an exceptional time. This is the status quo for humanity.

Data table.[1]

[1] https://news.northwesternmutual.com/planning-and-progress-st...

The premise of TFA along with the entirety of the comments are eloquently embodied by the misfit troubadour and grunge philosopher Todd Snider in Statistician's Blues [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUK6zjtUj00

This article is shilling some courseware for CNBC FYI.

I think that's an ad that appears at the bottom of most of the articles on "cnbc make it" so I'm not the specific article is shilling it per se.

I lived with my parents until I was 20 and they helped me out until I was 22. My girlfriend's kids are on the same path. Though even with people in their 30s and 40s I think it's common to get help for unexpected big expenses because a lot of people don't have adequate emergency funds.

> A large portion of U.S. adults are making ends meet with help from their parents.

Ok, but why?

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com has been linked on HN many times before.

Is it related to that?

Searching the internet, one can read more, such as:

> In August 1971, alongside the "Nixon Shock" that severed the dollar's convertibility to gold, the Nixon administration imposed a 90-day economy-wide freeze on all wages and prices. This was the first time the U.S. enacted wage and price controls outside of wartime. Following the initial 90-day freeze, the Nixon administration implemented a complex, multi-tiered price control system on the petroleum industry that lasted for years.

> In August 1971, Nixon was "floating" the dollar, abandoning the gold standard and "freezing" prices and wages.

This video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EBEapf3OFw asks the below:

> Why did America deliberately destroy its own manufacturing industry?

And starts off,

> It did not happen all at once. Americans watched their own country lose it, brand by brand, factory by factory. Every time, the country was handed the same three reasons...(It looked inevitable. And every one of them was true enough to believe.) Plenty of those factories were still making money the day they were ordered shut. They closed anyway, on the say-so of men who had never worked a shift in their lives and grew richer each time another one went dark....

Yup, and don't even get me started about what they're doing to the frogs!!!!11 (hint: it's very s*nful)

I really hope nothing like that happens to China and Japan. I am glad that their respective languages are such good natural barriers.

How so? If you don’t touch the principal you can live off the investment returns forever and so can your descendants.

Health care costs at the end of your life can eat everything you've ever saved and more. Cost of maintenance on housing is increasing and property insurance rates + HOA rates are going up. This idea only works under ideal conditions.

I'd be curious if the folks that are advocating for people to provide support to their adults kids also expect those adult kids to keep their parents living with them when elderly. I know assisted living facilities charge exorbitant amounts of money, to the point it's often advised to setup a trust, so the parent's assets are no longer viewed as their assets. These facilities apparently charge based on assets, where if you have none then suddenly the monthly cost to live there equates only to the value of your Social Security Income payments.

If my parents are indicative of anything, they're just going with the flow and believing it'll all magically work out.

Unfortunately that is the sad reality of the state of fiscal literacy in the country. We have work to do to prepare people for their own futures. Pensions were nice but this transition to private plans has been rough, with far too many believing their Social Security Income alone will be enough to sustain them in their golden years.

In reality, almost nobody ever has built "Generational wealth" because it's not a normal thing that happens.

Most people are just trying to survive for tomorrow.

It may feel that way but I do not believe it is indicative of the situation of the masses. Often who we surround ourselves with alters our perception of reality. I do think the US has work to do to restore more faith in people that success is achievable for everyone.

Many people I know brag about how much they rely on their parents.

Because boomers are selfish and holding onto most of the wealth, ruining and destroying the generations to follow. It’s a weird phenomenon actually, their parents gave them everything possible, even independence, yet, the boomers do all sort of shenanigans to keep holding on the wealth, and when they can’t, they go on manipulation tactics, as if their lives are the center of universe and all generations after are the minions to serve them.

>all generations after are the minions to serve them

Serve their kids. The money is only incidental to the power structure (nepotism, classism, xenophobia) that they intend to pass down to their chosen successors. They've been working to limit economic mobility, opportunity, and fairness for a while now.

What do you call the situation where your parents depend on your support? I helped my dad with a 6000 Euro out of pocket surgery so he can regain the use of his shoulder. And I'm an average working class Europoor, not a stock broker. And my mom is paying some of the bills for my grandma because she can't afford the bills on her ~300 Euro pension.

The parallels between the Great Depression and the conditions now are worrisome.