Malta is amongst the highest in the European Union when it comes to the rate of youths living with their parents, statistics published by the EU’s statistics body Eurostat show.

Malta registered the third highest share of young men living with their parents, at 87%, and the highest share of young women living with their parents at 82.4%. Eurostat defines a young person as falling into the 16 to 29 years age bracket, and finds that the EU average for young people living their parents stands at 68.2%.

Whilst Malta held the highest share of young women living with their parents – albeit having only 0.1% more than Croatia in this regard, with regards to the share of young men living with their parents, Croatia (with 93.1%) registered the highest share, followed by Slovakia (with 89.2%), and Italy (88.3%).

For the 16 to 19 years age group, Malta registers just a smidge under 99% of these youths living with their parents. For the age group 20-24 years, the share of young people living with their parents in 2017 in Malta was that of 92.9%, joint with Croatia and only below Slovakia (93.4%). The share of young people aged 25-29 years living with their parents was lower than in the age group 20-24 years in all EU Member States, but Malta remains one of the highest in this regard, with a 71% share of the population in that age bracket still living with their parents. Only Greece (72.3%) and Croatia (75.4%) register higher numbers.

At the other end of the spectrum, Scandinavian countries consistently show the lowest shares across all age brackets. Norway for instance stands out as 82.9% of young people aged 16-19 years were living with parents, a far lower share than in any of the EU Member States.  For the age group 20-24 years, the share of young people living with their parents in 2017 was below 30% in Denmark (23.8%) and Finland (26.6%) while it was also below 50% in Sweden (41.6 %).  Within the oldest group surveyed, whilst Malta shows a 71% share, some Scandinavian countries have rates lower than 10% - Norway (9%) being an example of this.

In every EU Member State, the proportion of young women living in the parental home was lower than that of young men. The largest gender gaps were observed in Bulgaria (19.3%) and Romania (17.2%), while the lowest were recorded in Spain (5.7%), Sweden (4.7%) and Malta (4.6%).

Finland (40.8% for young men and 30.1% for young women) and Denmark (39.5% for young men and 31.9% for young women) recorded the lowest shares, both for young men and for young women.