While the recession and weak recovery may have fed into the trend, forcing some young Americans to live at home if they had trouble finding a job, the shift started long before the most recent economic downturn, Fry said.
The share of young men and women living with a spouse or partner has been falling since the 1960s, the research found. About 56 percent of young men and 68 percent of young women lived with a partner or spouse in 1960, while only about one out of five still lived with their parents.
But after 1960, the share of young Americans living in their own homes with a spouse or partner started to dwindle. At the same time, the labor market was transforming, becoming less rewarding for men and especially men without college degrees. The labor force participation rate for men of all ages slipped from about 83 percent in 1960 to slightly more than 69 percent now.
Wages for men have also stagnated over the past few decades. On an inflation-adjusted basis, men earned median annual wages of $52,421 in 1973, which had declined to slightly more than $50,000 in 2013. Women's wages and labor force participation, on the other hand, have largely increased during the same period.
