LONDON (Xinhuanet) -- Financial pressures have delayed more British men in their 20s from leaving the safety of the parental nest to buy their own homes, according to government statistics on family life published this week.

The Office of National Statistics revealed a new trend that 57 percent of men and 38 percent of women aged 20-24 are now living with their parents. By their late 20s more than one in five men still live at their parents' homes, twice the rate of women.

The statistics also revealed that the number of births outside marriage had almost increased four times over the last two and half decades from 12 percent in 1980 to 42 percent in 2004, largely due to a sharp rise in the number of couples living together without choosing to marry.

The survey showed there were 7 million "singletons" in Britain. The proportion of one person households has almost doubled since 1971 and the average number of people per household has fallen from 2.9 to 2.4.

"More lone-parent families, smaller family sizes and the increase in one-person households have contributed to this decrease," said the government report, which referred to the rise in men choosing to live with their parents as an "emerging trend".

Meanwhile, women are more likely to marry men their junior. In 1963 only 15 percent of married women had younger husbands but by 2003 the figure had risen to 26 percent, the report said.

Additionally, British people are spending more money on traveling or buying a second home out of the country to avoid the unpredictable climate, the report mentioned. Some 167 million Britons traveled to and from foreign countries in 2004 compared to43 million people in 1980.

During the same period, the number of British families with second homes in countries like Spain and France increased 45 percent to almost 257,000.