t Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the
United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries,
instead showing that intergenerationally extended households generally benefit the
younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of
those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second
half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults
and greater financial strain among younger adults. This article uses U.S. census and
American Community Survey (ACS) data to examine the extent to which changes in
generational financial well-being over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency
in parent–adult child U.S. households between 1960 and 2010. We find that younger
adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and that while older
adults have become more financially independent of their adult children, they nevertheless
coreside with their needy adult children. We also find that the effect of
economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient
for younger adults, but decreasingly so for older adults.