Alexis Leondis, Columnist

Stop Panicking About Boomerang Kids

Adult children who move back home shouldn’t be slammed as moochers.

Heading home.

Photographer: Tim Boyle/Getty Images
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When adult children move back in with their parents, it causes a lot of cultural anxiety. We call them moochers or spongers. We say they’ve failed to launch.

But a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research should put these fears to rest. Grant M. Seiter, Mary J. Lopez and Sita Slavov looked at how adults aged 51 to 69 fare when their adult kids return home. Remarkably, it finds there’s no impact on a parent’s wealth.