Britain has produced a “boomerang” generation of children who are twice as likely as contemporaries in the rest of Europe to return to the family home in their twenties.

Research among young adults between 16 and 29 shows that each year 4% of those who have moved out of the family home return to live with their parents. This is more than double the percentage of boomerang children in France, Ireland, Greece and Portugal, which come next in the rankings.

The phenomenon is expected to become even more pronounced as the economic crisis deepens.

Maria Iacovou, chief research officer at Essex University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research, who carried out the study, said: “This is the first strong evidence of this phenomenon being greater in Britain than other countries.”

The research, to be published next month in a book, Changing Relationships, used data on people in 14 countries between 1994 and 2001.

Researchers point to the high cost of housing, the early age at which British children leave home for the first time and the fact that many rush into living as a couple in order to strike out on their own.

Among 20 to 24 year-olds, 58% of men and 39% of women now live with their parents, according to the Office for National Statistics. Since 2003 the number of students living at home in their first year of university has risen by almost 6,000 to 72,780 last year.

Gill Jones, emeritus professor of sociology at Keele University, said: “For some young people the only chance of leaving the parental home is by moving in as a couple. That’s putting quite a strain on young relationships. There’s more chance of breaking up.”

Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank, the estate agents, said: “The building of new accommodation has more than halved in the UK this year and I think we will see a spike in children moving home over the next couple of years.”

Hannah May, 23, has been living in London for more than two years. She works as a paralegal at Clifford Chance, but is about to move back to her family home near Lincoln.

“I’d like to be a bit closer to my family and I’d like to save a bit of money, which I haven’t been able to do living in London,” she said. “I don’t see moving home as a permanent thing, hopefully it will be for less than a year to save money and do some travelling.”

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