This paper documents two features of the rise in parental coresidence among prime-aged American adults from 1962 to 2023. First, we show how demographic change contributed to the long-run rise in coresidence. Through the early 2000s, rising coresidence was largely compositional: marriage rates declined, and unmarried adults are substantially more likely to live with their parents. Only over the last two decades has coresidence begun to rise within marital groups, suggesting that the recent increase reflects changes beyond the decline of marriage alone. Second, parental coresidence is strongly gendered. Prime-aged men are substantially more likely to live with their parents than women, and the gap has widened in recent decades. Differences in marital status and the presence of resident children account for roughly half of the contemporary gender gap. In particular, the growing divergence in residential parenthood between men and women contributes to the disparity by making parental coresidence less feasible for mothers than for otherwise similar fathers. Marriage and resident children emerge as central determinants of parental coresidence, shaping both its aggregate rise and an important share of its differences across the sexes.
© 2026 Dean Y. Kaplan