Stay-at-home kids – a worldwide phenomenon
They're dubbed "generation ni-ni" in Spain – those adults who still live at home and are neither working nor studying after the Spanish term "ni estudian, ni trabajan", but the phenomenon is by no means confined to Spain.
In Italy they are known as "bamboccioni" – or big babies – where nearly 60 per cent of 18-34 year old adults still live in their parents' home, up from almost 50 per cent since 1983. Once kept there by a love for mama's home-cooked pasta, the economic crisis has seen a boom in adults left unable to hold down a steady job or afford a home of their own. Last year a government minister, who admitted his mother washed his underwear and made his bed for him until he was 30, demanded a law obliging young Italians to leave the parental nest at 18 to stop them becoming hopelessly dependent on their parents. In the UK, the government has coined the term NEETS – not in employment, education or training. In England alone the proportion of NEETS aged 19-24 surged to 18.8 per cent of the age group, in the last quarter of 2010, up 1.4 per cent on the same period a year before. And those British adults who still live at home during their twenties and into their thirties have been somewhat cruelly dubbed KIPPERS, an acronym for "kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings".