For the International Youth Day on 12 August, the Zagreb-based daily newspaper Jutarnji List on Sunday ran an article on young Croatian adults mainly remaining in the homes of their parents until the age of 31.

For comparison, the average age for young Croats to move out of their parents’ homes is 31.8 while in Sweden, it is 18.5 years, the newspaper reported.

The data provided by the EU official statistical office (Eurostat) shows that in the European Union over one young adult out of four (28.5%) aged 25 to 34 were still living with their parents in 2016.

In 2017, the share of young people aged 16-29 living with their parents was 68.2 % in the EU-28.

“For young men the share was 73.3 %, while for young women it was 62.9 %, a gap of 10.4 percentage points,” according to the Eurostat.

The Croatian daily said that the data for 2017 also showed that every second young person aged between 18 and 34 lived in their parental households that year in the EU, while in Croatia this percentage probably stood at 73.2% which means nearly three fourths in that age group.

“In every EU Member State, the proportion of young women living in the parental home was lower than that of young men. The largest gender gaps were observed in Bulgaria (19.3 percentage points (pp)) and Romania (17.2 pp), while the lowest were recorded in Spain (5.7 pp), Sweden (4.7 pp) and Malta (4.6 pp),” according to Eurostat.

The Croatian daily reports that in 2018 the average age for young Slovaks fleeing the parental nest was 30.9 years, 30.7 in Malta, and 30.1 in Italy.

On the other, the figures in Nordic countries these figures are different – in Sweden 18.5 years, Denmark 21.1 years and Luxembourg where this average wage was 20.1 years, according to the data provided by the daily.

12 August was first designated International Youth Day by the UN General Assembly in 1999.