The millennial 30-year-old, compared to their counterpart from 40 years ago, lives in an almost unrecognizable fashion.
The Census Bureau released data on the characteristics of a 30-year-old in 1975 compared to one in 2015 that noted wide gaps in independence, family formation, and economic success.
“In 1975, nearly three in four 30-year-old had married, had a child, were not enrolled in school, and lived on their own. In 2015, just one in three 30-year-olds have these characteristics,” the Bureau noted.
By age 30 in 1975, 89 percent of young adults had ever married, but that has drastically declined to 57 percent in 2015. Living with a child also fell from 76 percent to 47 percent.
Young adults spend more time and money investing in education, and that’s led them to delay life events that marked adulthood for their parents. Young adults who have a high school diploma jumped from 80 percent to 90 percent, and labor force participation has climbed from 71 percent to 81 percent. That’s been driven by national improvements in high school completion and more women in the workforce, but it doesn’t mean income is better off.
“Moderate income,” a broad Census Bureau measure for the middle class, has actually fallen since 1975 from 71 percent to 55 percent. Homeownership, too, plummeted from 56 percent to 33 percent.
The middle class has been shrinking, as the Pew Research Center noted, and it’s been driven by metropolitan areas. The rich and the poor have seen their ranks swell as economic shifts make it more difficult for millennials to carve out an economic foothold than their parents had it.
“Among American adults overall, including those from outside the 229 areas examined in depth, the share living in middle-income households fell from 55 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2014,” Pew noted.
The middle class has seen low wage growth in recent decades, and with the rising cost of living and rent in cities, it’s pushed millennials to live with their parents or find roommates. Starting a family gets delayed for a few years until financial independence is more assured.
That doesn’t hold in all metropolitan areas, however. Richmond, Va.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Columbus, Ohio, for instance have the highest rates of millennials living alone, according to PR Newswire. The top 10 cities with independent-living millennials all fall in the South or Midwest, aside from Buffalo, thanks to the lower cost of living and growing economies there.
The average of 1975 is the minority of today. Millennials treat marriage as a life event to be delayed until education and an economic career has been stabilized. For example, 87 percent of new marriages between 2011 and 2012 were driven by the college educated, according to Pew.
Millennials haven’t rejected marriage, but they’ve delayed it for social and economic reasons.
