The emancipation age of Spanish youth has increased by more than a year and a half in the last decade and now stands at 30.3 years, nine years later than the age at which Finnish or Swedish youth leave the family home. This is clear from the latest Eurostat report on when young Europeans leave their parents' home, which places Spain as the fourth country, along with Bulgaria, with a later emancipation in 2022.
Specifically, the highest average ages at which young people leave home were recorded in Croatia (33.4 years), Slovakia (30.8), Greece (30.7), Spain and Bulgaria (30.3), Malta (30.1) and Italy (30). On the other hand, the countries where youngsters begin their independent life earlier are the Nordic countries: Finland (21.3), Sweden (21.4), Denmark (21.7) and Estonia (22.7).
The average in the European Union is 26.4 years and has changed little in the last decade, although it has grown in 14 countries. Where else, in Croatia (1.8 years), Greece (1.7) and Spain (1.6). And it has also grown significantly in Sweden (1.5), where in 2012 young people left the family home at only 19.9 years old on average.
But whether they leave sooner or later, in all countries it is observed that men leave their parents' house later than women. On average, European men do it at 27.3 years old and European women at 25.4. In fact, in a total of nine countries men leave once they are in their thirties (Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Slovakia, Italy, Malta, Slovenia and Portugal) while only Croatian women wait until that age.
The widest gender gap, at four and a half years, is seen in Romania, where last year young men left the family home at 29.9 years old and women at 25.4 years old, followed by Bulgaria (gap of 4.1 years), with men leaving at 32.3 years and women at 28.2. In contrast, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and Malta recorded the narrowest gaps, of just half a year, between young men and women leaving their parents' home.
In the Spanish case, the latest Emancipation Observatory prepared by the Youth Council already stressed that "young people in Spain cannot emancipate themselves until they stop being young." And it pointed out that it is not only because of the unemployment rate, as happened in other times, but because even if they have a job or higher education, they are not guaranteed to be able to access housing or stop being at risk of poverty.
