Millennials are the largest demographic right now, but when it comes to heading households they trail behind baby boomers and Gen Xers, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan fact tank in Washington, D.C.
Millennials range from ages 18 to 35, and the younger members may still be living with their parents or in a college dorm. Even so, millennial households top the charts in some categories:
1. More millennial households are in poverty than households headed by any other generation.
In the past half-century, the poverty rate among households headed by a young adult has been on the rise, according to Pew. Also, millennials are more racially and ethnically diverse than other generations and are more likely to be unmarried. Both are associated with higher poverty rates, the report states.
2. Millennial households dominate the ranks of the nation’s renters.
Out of the estimated 45.9 million households that rented their home last year, 18.4 million were headed by millennials. Previous generations at the same age were far more likely to own their homes.
3. About half of cohabitating-couple households are headed by a millennial.
Millennials are more likely to live with a romantic partner than previous generations of young adults, Pew notes. By 2016, millennials were heads of 4.2 million co-habitating households.
4. In 2016, millennials surpassed all other generations in household heads who were single mothers.
But only barely. Out of a total of 8.6 million households headed by a single mother with a child younger than 18, about
4 million were millennials and 3.9 million were Gen Xers.
5. Millennials are the generation with the largest number identifying as multiracial.
“Around 630,000 multiracial millennials headed a household in 2016, compared with about 540,000 multiracial Gen Xers and a similar number of multiracial boomers,” the report states.
