The most recent Eurostat data indicate that in Italy young people leave their parents’ home on average at 30.2 years of age, almost four years after the European Union average, which stopped at 26.3 years in 2025. Only Croatians, Greeks and Slovaks are later than the Italians, while the Spaniards are comparable to the young people of the Bel Paese. On the contrary, in Finland people leave home at the age of 21.4: almost 9 years before Italians. Among the possible causes, the data highlights a relationship between later exit and lower youth employment: in the Baltic and Northern European countries, where young people leave the family nest earlier, there are already many workers among 20-29 year olds, while Italy in this age group has the lowest employment rate of all the rest of Europe.
When Italians leave home: we are among the last in Europe
Going to live alone at 20 or 21 is a fairly common reality in some Northern European countries. In Italy, however, the transition to life outside the family arrives on average after the age of 30. This difference is illustrated by the latest Eurostat report, published on 15 September 2026 on data relating to 2025. In the European Union, young people left their parents’ home at the age of 26.3 on average, just 0.1 year older than in 2024. A value which, according to the European Statistics Office, has remained essentially stable at around 26 years of age since 2002.
Italy is in the later part of the ranking: 30.2 years is the average age at which young Italians leave the family unit. The same value is recorded in Spain while with greater permanence within the family of origin compared to Italy we find only three countries: Croatia, with 31.5 years, Greece and Slovakia, both at 30.9 years.
At the other extreme we find above all the Northern and Baltic countries. In Finland the average age is just 21.4 years, followed by Denmark with 21.8 and Estonia and Lithuania with 22.7 years.
The distance between the extremes is notable: between Finland and Italy there is an 8.8 year difference in the average age of leaving the parental home. This does not mean, however, that in Finland all young people go to live alone at 21, just as in Italy everyone remains with their parents until 30. This is a statistical estimate developed by Eurostat based on data from the European Labor Force Survey (EU-LFS). The indicator essentially identifies the age at which 50% of the population considered no longer lives in a family with their parents.
Why do we live with our parents until we are 30?
To understand why times are so different between the various European countries, Eurostat suggests also looking at the labor market: in most countries where young people leave their parents’ home earlier than the European average, the employment rate for the same age group is higher than the EU average. This is the case, for example, of the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Sweden: in these states, leaving the parental home tends to happen earlier and employment among 20-29 year olds tends to be higher.
The phenomenon presents itself in the opposite way in countries where people stay with their parents longer. In particular, Greece, Croatia, Spain and Italy are four countries where the leaving age is higher than the EU average while the youth employment rate is below the European average.
Leaving home therefore seems closely linked to the possibility of achieving sufficient economic autonomy: in Italy people leave their parents’ home later than in most of Europe, but the Italian employment rate between 20 and 29 years is the lowest in the European Union, and the only one lower than 50%.
However, there could also be other factors, such as the cost of housing, which could have a concrete impact on the possibility of living independently. For a young person, in fact, leaving the family means facing expenses such as rent or mortgage, utilities and other daily needs. In fact, the Eurostat report does not reduce this situation to a single cause: rather, it shows a strong difference between European countries and a correlation between youth employment and the moment of leaving the family of origin.
