Stay-at-home 20-somethings drive luxury boom says Morgan Stanley

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 13, 2022

Young adults who still live with their parents are key drivers of the luxury boom in the West, an analyst note from Morgan Stanley claims.

The investment bank, which sees the trend as generally positive for the luxury sector, said that more young adults are living with their parents than have done for multiple decades. And this not only gives them more cash to spend on luxury items, but also partly removes the worries others have around the overall rising cost-of-living.

Around 42% of adults aged under 34 in Britain still live in their parents’ family home (with more young men than women doing so). UK Office for National Statistics records of stay-at-home young people only began back in 1996, but this is the highest figure since that year when it came in at 36%. It means their rent and grocery bills are lower than they otherwise would be and that gives them more money to spare.

Morgan Stanley said “luxury consumers in the West have clearly been getting younger over the past few years” and its analyst Edouard Aubin cited such consumers as being less affected by soaring energy prices and other inflationary effects.

The note said a similar effect is being seen in the US where half of the generation aged between 18 and 29 live with their parents, the highest rate since the 1940s.

And it’s a situation that’s likely to continue. House prices remain high, more young people are in education for longer, while the age at which they get married is rising.

So while they might be saving to buy their own home, many are also taking a ‘live-now’ approach and are spending their cash on the increasing flow of youth-focused products coming out of the luxury sector.