Millennial life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations

Over the past 50 years – from the Silent Generation's immature adulthood to that of Millennials today – the United States has undergone large cultural and societal shifts. At present that the youngest Millennials are adults, how do they compare with those who were their age in the generations that came before them?

In general, they're ameliorate educated – a factor tied to employment and financial well-being – but there is a sharp separate between the economic fortunes of those who have a college education and those who don't.

Millennials have brought more racial and ethnic diversity to American social club. And Millennial women, like Generation X women, are more probable to participate in the nation's workforce than prior generations.

Compared with previous generations, Millennials – those ages 22 to 37 in 2018 – are delaying or foregoing spousal relationship and take been somewhat slower in forming their own households. They are also more likely to be living at abode with their parents, and for longer stretches.

And Millennials are now the second-largest generation in the U.Southward. electorate (after Baby Boomers), a fact that continues to shape the country's politics given their Democratic leanings when compared with older generations.

Those are some of the wide strokes that take emerged from Pew Research Center'south work on Millennials over the by few years. Now that the youngest Millennials are in their 20s, nosotros accept done a comprehensive update of our prior demographic work on generations. Here are the details.

Education

Today'south young adults are much meliorate educated than their grandparents, as the share of immature adults with a available's degree or higher has steadily climbed since 1968. Among Millennials, effectually iv-in-ten (39%) of those ages 25 to 37 accept a bachelor'southward degree or higher, compared with but 15% of the Silent Generation, roughly a quarter of Baby Boomers and about three-in-ten Gen Xers (29%) when they were the same age.

Millennials are better educated than prior generations

Gains in educational attainment have been particularly steep for immature women. Among women of the Silent Generation, only 11% had obtained at least a bachelor's degree when they were young (ages 25 to 37 in 1968). Millennial women are nigh iv times (43%) as probable every bit their Silent predecessors to have completed as much education at the same historic period. Millennial men are also improve educated than their predecessors. Virtually one-third of Millennial men (36%) accept at least a bachelor's degree, nearly double the share of Silent Generation men (19%) when they were ages 25 to 37.

Among Millennials, women outpacing men in college completion

While educational attainment has steadily increased for men and women over the past five decades, the share of Millennial women with a bachelor's degree is now higher than that of men – a reversal from the Silent Generation and Boomers. Gen X women were the get-go to outpace men in terms of instruction, with a three-percentage-indicate reward over Gen 10 men in 2001. Earlier that, late Boomer men in 1989 had a two-signal advantage over Boomer women.

Employment

From Boomers on, most young adult women have worked Boomer women surged into the workforce as immature adults, setting the stage for more than Gen 10 and Millennial women to follow arrange. In 1966, when Silent Generation women were ages 22 through 37, a majority (58%) were not participating in the labor forcefulness while 40% were employed. For Millennial women today, 72% are employed while just a quarter are not in the labor forcefulness. Boomer women were the turning point. Equally early on as 1985, more young Boomer women were employed (66%) than were non in the labor force (28%).

Earnings of young adults have only increased for the college-educated

And despite a reputation for chore hopping, Millennial workers are just as likely to stick with their employers as Gen 10 workers were when they were the same historic period. Roughly seven-in-ten each of Millennials ages 22 to 37 in 2018 (seventy%) and Gen Xers the same age in 2002 (69%) reported working for their current employer at to the lowest degree thirteen months. Nearly three-in-x of both groups said they'd been with their employer for at least 5 years.

Of grade, the economy varied for each generation. While the Great Recession affected Americans broadly, it created a particularly challenging chore market for Millennials entering the workforce. The unemployment rate was especially high for America's youngest adults in the years only after the recession, a reality that would impact Millennials' future earnings and wealth.

Income and wealth

The financial well-being of Millennials is complicated. The individual earnings for young workers have remained mostly flat over the past 50 years. Merely this belies a notably large gap in earnings between Millennials who have a college education and those who don't. Similarly, the household income trends for young adults markedly diverge by instruction. Equally far as household wealth, Millennials appear to have accumulated slightly less than older generations had at the same age.

Millennials with a available'south caste or more than and a full-fourth dimension job had median almanac earnings valued at $56,000 in 2018, roughly equal to those of college-educated Generation X workers in 2001. But for Millennials with some college or less, almanac earnings were lower than their counterparts in prior generations. For example, Millennial workers with some college education reported making $36,000, lower than the $38,900 early Baby Boomer workers made at the same age in 1982. The blueprint is similar for those immature adults who never attended college.

Millennials in 2018 had a median household income of roughly $71,400, like to that of Gen X young adults ($70,700) in 2001. (This analysis is in 2017 dollars and is adjusted for household size. Additionally, household income includes the earnings of the young developed, as well as the income of anyone else living in the household.)

For Millennials and Gen Xers, large education gaps in typical household income The growing gap by instruction is even more apparent when looking at annual household income. For households headed by Millennials ages 25 to 37 in 2018, the median adjusted household income was about $105,300 for those with a bachelor's degree or higher, roughly $56,000 greater than that of households headed past high schoolhouse graduates. The median household income deviation past education for prior generations ranged from $41,200 for late Boomers to $19,700 for the Silent Generation when they were immature.

While young adults in full general do non take much accumulated wealth, Millennials accept slightly less wealth than Boomers did at the aforementioned historic period. The median net worth of households headed past Millennials (ages xx to 35 in 2016) was about $12,500 in 2016, compared with $20,700 for households headed by Boomers the same age in 1983. Median net worth of Gen Ten households at the same age was about $fifteen,100.

This modest deviation in wealth can exist partly attributed to differences in debt past generation. Compared with before generations, more Millennials accept outstanding educatee debt, and the amount of it they owe tends to exist greater. The share of immature adult households with whatsoever pupil debt doubled from 1998 (when Gen Xers were ages 20 to 35) to 2016 (when Millennials were that age). In improver, the median amount of debt was about 50% greater for Millennials with outstanding student debt ($19,000) than for Gen X debt holders when they were young ($12,800).

Housing

Millennials without a bachelor's degree more likely to still be living with parentsMillennials, hit hard by the Great Recession, have been somewhat slower in forming their own households than previous generations. They're more likely to live in their parents' home and also more than likely to be at habitation for longer stretches. In 2018, 15% of Millennials (ages 25 to 37) were living in their parents' domicile. This is well-nigh double the share of early Boomers and Silents (8% each) and 6 per centum points college than Gen Xers who did so when they were the same historic period.

The rise in young adults living at home is particularly prominent among those with lower education. Millennials who never attended college were twice equally likely as those with a bachelor's degree or more than to live with their parents (20% vs. 10%). This gap was narrower or nonexistent in previous generations. Roughly equal shares of Silents (about 7% each) lived in their parents' domicile when they were ages 25 to 37, regardless of educational attainment.

Millennials are also moving significantly less than earlier generations of young adults. Nearly ane-in-six Millennials ages 25 to 37 (16%) have moved in the by year. For previous generations at the same age, roughly a quarter had.

Family unit

Millennials less likely to be married than previous generations at same ageOn the whole, Millennials are starting families later than their counterparts in prior generations. But under half (46%) of Millennials ages 25 to 37 are married, a steep drib from the 83% of Silents who were married in 1968. The share of 25- to 37-year-olds who were married steadily dropped for each succeeding generation, from 67% of early Boomers to 57% of Gen Xers. This in part reflects broader societal shifts toward marrying later in life. In 1968, the typical American adult female first married at age 21 and the typical American human being start midweek at 23. Today, those figures have climbed to 28 for women and 30 for men.

But it's not all about delayed wedlock. The share of adults who have never married is increasing with each successive generation. If current patterns go on, an estimated one-in-four of today's young adults will accept never married by the time they achieve their mid-40s to early 50s – a record loftier share.

Marriage rate has fallen the most among those with less educationIn prior generations, those ages 25 to 37 whose highest level of instruction was a loftier school diploma were more likely than those with a bachelor's degree or higher to be married. Gen Xers reversed this trend, and the divide widened among Millennials. Four-in-ten Millennials with just a high school diploma (40%) are currently married, compared with 53% of Millennials with at to the lowest degree a available's degree. In comparison, 86% of Silent Generation high school graduates were married in 1968 versus 81% of Silents with a bachelor's caste or more than.

Millennial women are as well waiting longer to get parents than prior generations did. In 2016, 48% of Millennial women (ages xx to 35 at the time) were moms. When Generation 10 women were the aforementioned age in 2000, 57% were already mothers, similar to the share of Boomer women (58%) in 1984. All the same, Millennial women now account for the vast majority of almanac U.Due south. births, and more than than 17 one thousand thousand Millennial women have become mothers.

Voting

Younger generations (Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z) now make upwardly a articulate bulk of America's voting-eligible population. As of November 2018, about six-in-10 adults eligible to vote (59%) were from one of these iii generations, with Boomers and older generations making up the other 41%.

Gen Xers and younger generations are the clear majority of eligible votersNonetheless, young adults have historically been less likely to vote than their older counterparts, and these younger generations have followed that same pattern, turning out to vote at lower rates than older generations in recent elections.

In the 2016 election, Millennials and Gen Xers cast more than votes than Boomers and older generations, giving the younger generations a slight majority of total votes bandage. However, higher shares of Silent/Greatest generation eligible voters (lxx%) and Boomers (69%) reported voting in the 2016 election compared with Gen 10 (63%) and Millennial (51%) eligible voters. Going forrard, Millennial turnout may increase as this generation grows older.

Generational differences in political attitudes and partisan affiliation are as wide as they have been in decades. Amid registered voters, 59% of Millennials affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with almost half of Boomers and Gen Xers (48% each) and 43% of the Silent Generation. With this divide comes generational differences on specific issue areas, from views of racial bigotry and immigration to foreign policy and the scope of government.

Population modify and the futurity

By 2019, Millennials are projected to number 73 meg, overtaking Baby Boomers as the largest living adult generation. Although a greater number of births underlie the Infant Blast generation, Millennials will outnumber Boomers in office because immigration has been boosting their numbers.

Projected population by generationMillennials are also bringing more racial and ethnic diversity. When the Silent Generation was young (ages 22 to 37), 84% were not-Hispanic white. For Millennials, the share is just 55%. This change is driven partly by the growing number of Hispanic and Asian immigrants, whose ranks have increased since the Boomer generation. The increased prevalence of interracial matrimony and differences in fertility patterns accept besides contributed to the country'south shifting racial and indigenous makeup.

Looking ahead at the adjacent generation, early benchmarks show Generation Z (those ages six to 21 in 2018) is on track to be the nation's virtually diverse and best-educated generation all the same. Nearly one-half (48%) are racial or indigenous minorities. And while most are still in M-12 schools, the oldest Gen Zers are enrolling in college at a college rate than even Millennials were at their age. Early on indications are that their opinions on issues are like to those of Millennials.

Of form, Gen Z is still very immature and may be shaped by futurity unknown events. Just Pew Research Center looks forwards to spending the next few years studying life for this new generation every bit information technology enters adulthood.

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