Fast Facts: Demographics/Family Life

• 67 million Americans were between the ages of 18 and 34 in 2005.

• Compared with those entering adulthood in the 1970s and 1980s, 18-24 year olds in the late 1990s were:
  • more racially and ethnically diverse. Almost 20% of young adults aged 25-34 were born outside the United States.
  • much less likely to have been reared in an intact, two-parent family
  • more likely to have never married; their earnings are the lowest of all three time periods; and they have lost ground on both social class ranking and occupational prestige [Smith. pdf ]

(Fussell & Furstenberg).

• About one-fourth of young adults aged 18-34 are not in the labor force

• About one in five (20%) youth aged 18-34 do not have a high school degree
  • 61% have some college
  • 19% have a college degree or higher
     
• Since the 1970s, there has been a 50% increase in the number of young adults in their 20s living at home, which alone has led to a 19% increase in shared housing costs incurred by parents. [Schoeni. pdf]

• Although slightly more than half of men and nearly two-thirds of women had left their parents’ home by age 22, 16% of both returned home at some point before age 35 [Mouw: pdf]

• Over time, youth have been less inclined to marry early [Smith. pdf]
   
  • Percent of 18-24 year olds never-married:
  • 1973: 60.5%
  • 1985: 73.8%
  • 1997: 73.9%
• Even after marriage, men and women combine a variety of roles more often than in the past, such as attending school and working, both before and after childbearing.
• Youth today are more disconnected from society via conventional indicators (they are less likely to read a newspaper, attend church, belong to a religion or a union, vote for President, or identify with a political party than previously). However, they are more likely today to have done community service, to use the internet for communication and political information, and to get political information from unconventional sources, such as “mock” news). They are more pessimistic about society in general and of people in particular, but they are more liberal on a wide range of measures, especially on civil liberties, modern gender roles, racial equality, and secularism. [Smith pdf ]

SOURCE: All data from On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Ruben Rumbaut. Names in parenthesis indicate chapter author, and accompanying policy brief based on the book.