Young people from the Canary Islands are the ones who leave the family home the most in the age range of 16 to 29 years old after the Catalans, according to the latest data from the Emancipation Observatory at the end of 2023.
According to this study, 20% of young people from the Canary Islands were emancipated last year, when the national average was 17%, the best figure since mid-2020 but still far from what it was before the pandemic (18.6%) and the peak it reached in 2007 (26.1%).
In Spain, there are 236,333 more young people aged 16 to 29 living outside the family home than a year before, although the emancipation rate is 14.9 points lower than the European rate.
Not only do young Europeans emancipate more, but they also do so earlier: at 26.3 years old, compared to the average of 30.4 in Spain.
Rentals rose 2.5 times more than the salaries of young people
More young people became independent in the second half of 2023, but they did so in worse conditions due to the historical prices of housing costs and supplies.
The rent for a standard apartment is 968 euros per month, 88 euros more than a year before (10% more).
Rental prices rose 2.5 times more than the salaries of young people; the price of supplies rose 17.3%, standing at 163.61 euros per month, the study details.
Therefore, if the median salary of a young person in the fourth quarter of 2023 was 1,050.77 euros net in 12 payments, they could not even afford to rent a home alone with their entire salary, lamented the president of the Spanish Youth Council, Andrea Henry, at the presentation of the study.
"We cannot access housing alone, only to share and that means indebting ourselves. Housing problems could become the next pandemic; we need urgent solutions now," she added.
Work does not encourage emancipation or lift people out of poverty
The observatory warns that three out of 10 young people in Spain are at risk of poverty, one point more than in 2022. In the case of young workers, 22.8% are.
Proof of the precariousness in jobs is that, despite the fact that the emancipation rate is higher among young people with employment, only 29.6% of the young population with work lived outside the family home.
The high prices of housing and its supplies delay the decision to stop living with their parents in many young people, with or without work: 83% do not emancipate or, in other words, six million young people.
Only in five autonomous communities did the emancipation rate not increase: Balearic Islands, Extremadura, Region of Murcia, Navarra and La Rioja; that is, in 2023 there was a lower percentage of emancipated young people than a year before in those regions.
The report shows great differences between the emancipation rates of the different communities. With the highest rates are Catalonia (20.6%), Canary Islands (20%) and Madrid (18%), compared to Extremadura (13.6%), Cantabria (13.9%) and Castilla-La Mancha (14%) with fewer young people living outside the family home.