Young adult man sitting on a bed with a laptop and moving boxes in a bedroom, illustrating the difficulty of affordable independent living in America.
economy, family

Americans Are Having Less Sex. Many Can’t Afford a Place of Their Own.

High rents are keeping some young Americans in their parents’ homes. Researchers have found connections between living arrangements and sexual activity, although housing cannot explain the whole decline.

A 28-year-old American may have a job, a college degree and enough money to pay everyday bills. Yet renting an apartment alone could consume too much of that income.

So the person stays with their parents.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that arrangement. Families share homes for many reasons. But imagine trying to build a romantic relationship while your parents sleep down the hallway.

Where do you spend time together? How much privacy can you expect? And what happens when neither partner can afford an independent home?

I began asking these questions while examining America’s much-discussed sex recession.

The usual explanations involve smartphones, pornography and changing attitudes toward relationships. Researchers have studied those possibilities, with mixed findings.

I wanted to understand something more basic.

Could America’s housing crisis be affecting opportunities for intimacy?

The research suggests it could, although the connection is less straightforward than some headlines imply.

Americans are having less frequent sex

In 1990, 55% of Americans aged 18 to 64 reported having sex at least once a week. By 2024, the proportion had fallen to 37%, according to an Institute for Family Studies analysis of the General Social Survey.

That is a substantial decline.

Another study, published in JAMA Network Open in 2020, examined sexual activity among adults aged 18 to 44.

Among men aged 18 to 24, the proportion reporting no sexual activity during the preceding year increased from 18.9% in 2000–2002 to 30.9% in 2016–2018.

The researchers also found increases in sexual inactivity among men and women aged 25 to 34.

But the findings are not unanimous.

In 2021, Rice University researcher Robert Bozick published a study in the American Journal of Men’s Health using the National Survey of Family Growth.

He found no evidence of a population-wide rise in male sexual inactivity between 2006 and 2019 after accounting for differences between birth cohorts and other factors.

Men born between 2000 and 2004 nevertheless showed higher inactivity than earlier birth cohorts at comparable ages.

The studies used different surveys and statistical methods. One measured changes in reported sexual activity across particular periods, while another separated the effects of age, historical period and birth cohort.

They should not be presented as identical measurements.

The broader evidence points toward important changes in Americans’ sexual lives, particularly among younger adults. It does not establish that everybody is becoming less sexually active for the same reason.

Housing independence has become more expensive

The housing figures tell a different story, but an equally important one.

In June 2026, the Pew Research Center reported that inflation-adjusted median American home values had increased 30% between 2019 and 2024.

Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted median income of households headed by adults younger than 40 rose only 9%.

Buying a home became more difficult.

For someone in their twenties, however, the immediate concern may not be buying property. It may be paying the rent on a small apartment.

The Urban Institute reported in July 2026 that about 20% of Americans aged 25 to 34 lived with their parents.

In 2005, the figure was 11.8%.

The share peaked at 22.8% in 2017 before declining. It remained high by historical standards, and the researchers identified renewed upward pressure after 2022.

They also found striking differences between housing markets.

In expensive metropolitan areas, the inflation-adjusted median monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment rose from $1,289 in 2005 to $1,660 in 2024.

By 2024, the proportion of 25-to-34-year-olds living with parents was 5.8 percentage points higher in high-rent metropolitan areas than in low-rent ones.

The pattern appeared across income groups.

That does not mean every adult living with parents has been priced out of the rental market. Family preferences, employment conditions and other circumstances also influence where people live.

But the geographical relationship is difficult to ignore.

Where renting costs more, a larger share of young adults remain in their parents’ homes.

What researchers found about living with parents and casual sex

In 2021, sociologists Scott J. South and Lei Lei published a study in Socius examining why fewer Americans aged 18 to 23 were having casual sex.

They used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics’ Transition into Adulthood Supplement, covering 2007 to 2017.

Their findings were more complicated than I expected.

Among young men, increasing parental co-residence helped explain part of the decline in casual sexual activity.

When examined separately, the rise in living with parents accounted for a little more than 10% of that decline.

Declining alcohol consumption was a larger explanatory factor. Increased computer gaming also contributed in their analysis.

When the researchers considered the factors together, parental co-residence no longer explained a statistically significant share independently.

For young women, living with parents was associated with a lower likelihood of casual sex. But the rise in parental co-residence did not explain much of the decline over time.

Reduced alcohol consumption was the principal measurable explanation for women in that study.

These distinctions matter.

The study provides evidence that living arrangements are relevant to casual sexual activity. It does not show that parents’ homes are responsible for a large proportion of America’s sex recession.

It also does not identify expensive rents as the reason each participant lived with their parents.

Researchers had established a relationship between living arrangements and behaviour, not the complete chain from higher housing costs to fewer sexual encounters.

There is another possibility.

Some young people may live with parents because they are not in relationships, rather than become less sexually active because they live with parents.

Both processes could be operating.

Dating is becoming a financial question

Housing is not the only expense that shapes a young adult’s social life.

Going out regularly costs money. Transport costs money. A person trying to save for a rental deposit may feel uncomfortable spending on dates.

Those pressures do not necessarily prevent someone from finding a partner. But they can affect how people approach dating.

The Kinsey Institute offered useful evidence in September 2026.

Working with research partners, the institute surveyed 2,373 Americans aged 18 to 29 about relationships and sexual experiences.

Forty-three percent said financial concerns made dating or maintaining romantic relationships more difficult.

Thirty-seven percent reported that financial stress had negatively affected their sex lives.

The survey used an online quota-based sample, not a fully probability-based national sample. Its results should therefore be read with that limitation in mind.

The researchers did not establish how much of the financial pressure came from rent.

Yet their findings provide an important piece of evidence.

Some young Americans report that their economic circumstances interfere with the relationships they want.

The question is no longer simply whether money and intimacy are connected. It is which financial pressures matter most, for whom, and under what circumstances.

Fewer relationships may matter more than fewer opportunities for casual sex

There is a point the sex recession debate often misses.

Sexual activity frequently occurs within established relationships.

If fewer young adults enter romantic partnerships, overall sexual activity may decline even without a major change in individual desire.

Research by Lei and South, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, identified declining romantic relationship formation as an important explanation for reduced sexual activity among young Americans.

Other factors contributed too, including declining earnings among young men.

The Institute for Family Studies reported another relevant trend in its analysis of the General Social Survey.

Between 2014 and 2024, the proportion of adults aged 18 to 29 living with a married or unmarried partner fell from 42% to 32%.

That is a 10-percentage-point decline.

But why are fewer young adults living with partners?

Some may prefer independence. Others may not have found suitable partners.

Housing affordability may influence the decision to establish a shared home, although the partnership statistics alone cannot tell us how much.

Moving in together involves financial decisions. Couples must agree on rent, location and whether they can manage the household if one person loses an income.

Expensive accommodation may make that decision harder.

Still, a lower rate of cohabitation does not necessarily mean fewer romantic relationships. Some couples maintain separate homes by choice.

We need to distinguish a decline in partnerships from a decline in couples sharing a home.

Living with parents is not evidence of personal failure

I would be careful about portraying young adults who live with parents as people who have failed to become independent.

Multigenerational households are common in many societies, including Pakistan.

In Karachi, parents may share a home with their married children. Sometimes this arrangement reflects financial necessity. In other families, it is simply the preferred way of living.

Privacy depends on the home’s size and the relationships within it.

An American adult living with parents may have considerable freedom. Another may have little.

Neither person’s sexual activity can be predicted simply from their address.

Research usually measures categories such as living with parents or living independently. It cannot always capture the privacy available inside individual households.

A large family house with separate accommodation is different from a crowded apartment.

Treating them as equivalent would conceal an important part of the experience.

Less sex does not always mean less happiness

The Kinsey Institute’s 2026 survey raises another question.

Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported having no sexual partners during the previous three months.

Nineteen percent said they had never had a sexual partner.

Yet only 18% reported dissatisfaction with their sex lives.

The figures came from different survey questions and should not be interpreted as showing that every sexually inactive respondent was satisfied.

They do show why sexual inactivity should not automatically be described as personal distress.

Some people are content being single. Others have little interest in sex.

There are also people who want intimate relationships but struggle to form them.

Those situations deserve different interpretations.

I would not consider a decline in sexual activity a problem merely because a national survey records fewer encounters.

The more meaningful concern is whether people can pursue relationships they actually want.

Economic conditions matter most when they limit that choice.

Housing is not the whole explanation

There is a serious objection to the housing argument.

American sexual frequency was declining before the sharp rise in housing costs following the pandemic.

Researchers have also found declining sexual frequency among some married and cohabiting adults.

Those findings cannot be explained simply by young people remaining in their childhood bedrooms.

Changes in partnership patterns provide part of the explanation, but they cannot explain every decline within existing couples.

The research points toward several influences.

Alcohol consumption has changed. Digital entertainment occupies more leisure time. Economic insecurity may affect confidence and social participation.

These factors do not affect everyone equally.

Nor can researchers assume that lower sexual activity causes poor well-being. The relationship may be different for people who are content with their circumstances and those who feel isolated.

Housing needs to be examined within this larger picture.

It should not replace one oversimplified explanation with another.

What would prove the housing connection?

I would like to see researchers follow young adults before and after they move out of their parents’ homes.

Do their dating opportunities change? Does having private accommodation lead to more frequent romantic encounters?

What happens when rent rises sharply in one city but remains relatively stable in another?

Researchers would also need to account for employment, relationship status and personal preferences.

People who move out may differ from those who stay with parents in ways that also affect dating.

Without accounting for those differences, a study could mistake selection for causation.

The existing research provides reasons to investigate housing as a structural factor. It does not establish how much cheaper accommodation would change America’s sexual behaviour.

The distinction is worth preserving.

The price of privacy

We usually measure housing affordability through rent, mortgage payments and the share of income left after essential expenses.

Those figures tell us whether a person can afford somewhere to live.

They tell us less about the relationships that become easier or harder inside those living arrangements.

A young adult may remain with parents to save money. Another may share an apartment with several roommates.

Both arrangements can be sensible responses to an expensive market.

Neither automatically prevents intimacy.

But when privacy depends on having enough money for independent accommodation, housing costs can shape opportunities that economic statistics rarely measure.

America’s sex recession has several explanations, and researchers still disagree about its size and distribution.

Housing is not a proven master explanation.

What interests me is a narrower finding: young Americans face substantial barriers to forming independent households, and some research connects their living arrangements with reduced sexual activity.

We should not confuse those findings with proof of causation.

We should not ignore them either.

An apartment is not a guarantee of romance.

For someone who wants a relationship and has nowhere private to spend time with a partner, however, it may offer something more immediate than financial independence.

A door they can close.

Research and sources

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