Millennial life: How immature adulthood today compares with prior generations

Over the past 50 years – from the Silent Generation'due south young adulthood to that of Millennials today – the U.s. has undergone large cultural and societal shifts. At present that the youngest Millennials are adults, how do they compare with those who were their historic period in the generations that came earlier them?

In general, they're meliorate educated – a gene tied to employment and financial well-existence – but there is a precipitous divide between the economic fortunes of those who have a college instruction and those who don't.

Millennials have brought more racial and ethnic diversity to American society. And Millennial women, like Generation X women, are more likely to participate in the nation'due south workforce than prior generations.

Compared with previous generations, Millennials – those ages 22 to 37 in 2018 – are delaying or foregoing spousal relationship and accept been somewhat slower in forming their own households. They are also more likely to be living at home 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'southward politics given their Autonomous leanings when compared with older generations.

Those are some of the broad strokes that have emerged from Pew Research Middle's piece of work on Millennials over the past few years. Now that the youngest Millennials are in their 20s, nosotros accept washed a comprehensive update of our prior demographic piece of work on generations. Here are the details.

Pedagogy

Today's young adults are much better educated than their grandparents, as the share of young adults with a bachelor's degree or higher has steadily climbed since 1968. Among Millennials, effectually 4-in-ten (39%) of those ages 25 to 37 have a bachelor'south degree or higher, compared with just 15% of the Silent Generation, roughly a quarter of Babe Boomers and well-nigh three-in-ten Gen Xers (29%) when they were the aforementioned historic period.

Millennials are better educated than prior generations

Gains in educational attainment have been particularly steep for young women. Among women of the Silent Generation, only 11% had obtained at least a bachelor'southward degree when they were immature (ages 25 to 37 in 1968). Millennial women are virtually 4 times (43%) as probable as their Silent predecessors to take completed as much education at the same age. Millennial men are likewise amend educated than their predecessors. About i-third of Millennial men (36%) have 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 by v 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 first to outpace men in terms of education, with a 3-per centum-point reward over Gen X men in 2001. Before that, late Boomer men in 1989 had a ii-point advantage over Boomer women.

Employment

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

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

And despite a reputation for job hopping, Millennial workers are just equally probable to stick with their employers equally Gen X workers were when they were the same age. Roughly vii-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 least xiii months. Most three-in-ten of both groups said they'd been with their employer for at least five years.

Of course, the economy varied for each generation. While the Great Recession affected Americans broadly, information technology created a peculiarly challenging job market for Millennials entering the workforce. The unemployment rate was especially high for America's youngest adults in the years just after the recession, a reality that would touch 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. Simply this belies a notably large gap in earnings between Millennials who accept a college education and those who don't. Similarly, the household income trends for immature adults markedly diverge by education. Equally far as household wealth, Millennials appear to take accumulated slightly less than older generations had at the same age.

Millennials with a bachelor's degree or more and a total-time 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 higher or less, annual 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 fabricated at the aforementioned age in 1982. The pattern is similar for those young 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 adult, besides 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 education is even more than credible 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 available's caste or college, roughly $56,000 greater than that of households headed by loftier school graduates. The median household income difference by education for prior generations ranged from $41,200 for late Boomers to $19,700 for the Silent Generation when they were young.

While young adults in general exercise not have much accumulated wealth, Millennials have slightly less wealth than Boomers did at the same age. The median net worth of households headed by Millennials (ages xx to 35 in 2016) was near $12,500 in 2016, compared with $20,700 for households headed by Boomers the same age in 1983. Median net worth of Gen X households at the aforementioned age was about $fifteen,100.

This modest difference in wealth can exist partly attributed to differences in debt by generation. Compared with earlier generations, more Millennials have outstanding educatee debt, and the corporeality of information technology they owe tends to be greater. The share of young developed households with whatever student debt doubled from 1998 (when Gen Xers were ages 20 to 35) to 2016 (when Millennials were that age). In addition, the median corporeality of debt was nearly 50% greater for Millennials with outstanding student debt ($19,000) than for Gen X debt holders when they were immature ($12,800).

Housing

Millennials without a bachelor's degree more likely to still be living with parentsMillennials, hit hard past the Swell Recession, have been somewhat slower in forming their own households than previous generations. They're more likely to live in their parents' abode and also more likely to be at home for longer stretches. In 2018, 15% of Millennials (ages 25 to 37) were living in their parents' home. This is nearly double the share of early Boomers and Silents (8% each) and 6 percentage points higher than Gen Xers who did then when they were the same age.

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

Millennials are likewise moving significantly less than before generations of immature adults. About i-in-six Millennials ages 25 to 37 (16%) have moved in the past year. For previous generations at the aforementioned age, roughly a quarter had.

Family

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. Just under half (46%) of Millennials ages 25 to 37 are married, a steep drop 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 on Boomers to 57% of Gen Xers. This in part reflects broader societal shifts toward marrying afterward in life. In 1968, the typical American woman first married at age 21 and the typical American human first wed at 23. Today, those figures have climbed to 28 for women and 30 for men.

Merely it's not all about delayed marriage. The share of adults who take never married is increasing with each successive generation. If current patterns proceed, an estimated one-in-four of today'southward young adults will take never married past the time they reach their mid-40s to early 50s – a record high 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 schoolhouse diploma were more likely than those with a bachelor'southward degree or higher to exist married. Gen Xers reversed this trend, and the separate widened among Millennials. Four-in-x Millennials with simply a high school diploma (twoscore%) are currently married, compared with 53% of Millennials with at least a bachelor's degree. In comparison, 86% of Silent Generation high school graduates were married in 1968 versus 81% of Silents with a bachelor'due south degree or more than.

Millennial women are as well waiting longer to get parents than prior generations did. In 2016, 48% of Millennial women (ages twenty to 35 at the time) were moms. When Generation 10 women were the same age in 2000, 57% were already mothers, similar to the share of Boomer women (58%) in 1984. All the same, Millennial women now business relationship for the vast majority of annual U.S. births, and more than 17 million Millennial women have get mothers.

Voting

Younger generations (Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z) now make upwardly a clear majority of America's voting-eligible population. As of November 2018, well-nigh 6-in-ten adults eligible to vote (59%) were from one of these 3 generations, with Boomers and older generations making up the other 41%.

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

In the 2016 election, Millennials and Gen Xers bandage more than votes than Boomers and older generations, giving the younger generations a slight majority of total votes cast. However, higher shares of Silent/Greatest generation eligible voters (70%) and Boomers (69%) reported voting in the 2016 election compared with Gen X (63%) and Millennial (51%) eligible voters. Going forward, Millennial turnout may increment every bit this generation grows older.

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

Population change and the future

By 2019, Millennials are projected to number 73 1000000, overtaking Baby Boomers as the largest living adult generation. Although a greater number of births underlie the Baby Nail generation, Millennials will outnumber Boomers in function because immigration has been boosting their numbers.

Projected population by generationMillennials are besides bringing more racial and ethnic variety. When the Silent Generation was young (ages 22 to 37), 84% were non-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 union and differences in fertility patterns have also contributed to the country'south shifting racial and ethnic makeup.

Looking ahead at the next generation, early on benchmarks show Generation Z (those ages 6 to 21 in 2018) is on track to be the nation'southward most diverse and best-educated generation still. Nearly one-half (48%) are racial or ethnic minorities. And while well-nigh are however in Thousand-12 schools, the oldest Gen Zers are enrolling in college at a higher rate than even Millennials were at their historic period. Early on indications are that their opinions on issues are like to those of Millennials.

Of course, Gen Z is however very immature and may be shaped by future unknown events. But Pew Research Center looks frontward to spending the next few years studying life for this new generation as information technology enters adulthood.

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