Croatia has once again found itself at the very top of the ranking of European Union countries when it comes to the average age at which young people become independent and leave their parents' home, the Jutarnji List daily wrote on Tuesday.

According to the latest Eurostat data, last year men in Croatia left their parental home on average at the age of 34.7, and women at the age of 32.

In Croatia, as many as 78 percent of young people aged 18 to 34 still live with their parents, compared to 12.5 percent in Sweden.

Southern countries traditionally maintain much stronger family ties than those in the north, and it is culturally more acceptable to stay with parents longer, just as children are expected to take care of their elderly parents, the daily said.

In addition to cultural reasons, there are also economic reasons because it is objectively difficult to become independent in Croatia due to the high cost of housing compared to average wages and the absence of an effective and widely available housing policy, Dr. Ivan Cipin of the Department of Demography at the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb was quoted as saying.

However, some experts look at these data with some doubt and point out that Eurostat did not present a clear methodology for obtaining these data.

They are convinced that Eurostat includes young people who live with their parents as well as “children” who have already started their own families and who live with their parents in the same house, although not necessarily in the same household. In Croatia, especially in rural areas, it is common for parents to live on the ground floor, one child on the first floor, and another on the second floor, with their families.

If Eurostat also counts them as “children who have not become independent”, then such a high age of independence from parents for men – almost 35 years and almost 2.5 years more than the second-placed Bulgaria and Slovakia – makes much more sense, Jutarnji List said.