Almost half the people under the age of 34 in Malta still live with their parents. It is the fourth highest rate in Europe, coming in just behind Slovakia, Bulgaria and Greece. It might also come as no surprise that Italy comes next. Just to put it into perspective, only 1.8 % of Danes in the same age group live with their parents.

Malta is typically Mediterranean. The bulk of people continue to live with their parents until most eventually find a mate, marry and set up their own matrimonial home. Indeed, some people are still looked at with scorn if they say they live alone – most would raise an eyebrow and ask: “Why? When you can still live at home, pay no rent and be cooked and cleaned for?” At least, things are not as bad as they were just a couple of decades ago, when people would get married and move their wife or husband in with the family.

Living alone from a younger age reduces the ‘spoilt’ factor. People learn to fend for themselves and learn what real life, the everyday grind feels like. In northern Europe and other places such as the UK, the US and Australia, youngsters clamour to leave the clutches of the parental home and forge ahead with their own lives. It helps people develop. But on the other hand, some might say that kids staying home till a later age allows them to save and learn things from their parents before getting married or going it alone. It gives them more of a nest egg to tap into when the time to marry or move out comes. We cannot really agree with that, but some will counter with it.

What is, however, worrying, is that Malta has seen the second largest increase in people under 34 living at home in the last five years – 6.3 %

It is imperative that we find out why. Three non scientific explanations could be as follows. The first one is simple. People’s children are being spoilt more and more and they are getting lazier and lazier.

The second could be that marriages are not working out (possibly because of the above mentioned spoilt factor) and people are moving back in with their parents.

But the third, and most worrying factor, could be that life isn’t what it used to be and that property is becoming unaffordable for first time buyers.

Sure, people can always rent. But in doing so, you make it even harder for yourself to get on the property ladder on your own steam. We also have to look into why property is becoming unaffordable. Is it because the economy is so good and the house market so buoyant that prices are artificially high? Or is it because our wages don’t cope with the cost of living? Successive governments, including the present one have always tried to help first time buyers to penetrate the market. So why the increase? Someone ought to commission a study, but we might not like to hear what we find out. Although it is a combination of the above, we tend to believe that the 20 to 30 somethings are overly mollycoddled and take advantage of their parents. The parents, on the other hand, are too daft to shoo them out or at least help them on their way.