Demographics

• 67 million Americans were between the ages of 18 and 34 in 2005. Profile of young adults, 2000
  

Living on One’s Own (see tables 1 and 5 in Rumbaut and Komaie).

Age 18–34: 73% were no longer living with their parents.
18-24: 50% were no longer living in their parents’ home
Age 25-29: 85% were no longer living in their parents’ home
Age 30-34: 93% were no longer living in their parents’ home.

Share of Single Young Adults Living with Parents, 2005

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]

Shares of Young Adults Returning Home
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]

Shares of Young Adults Living at Home, 1990 and 2000, by Gender and Age

Souce: Elizabeth Fussell and Frank Furstenberg, Jr., "The Transition to Adulthood during the Twentieth Century." In On the Frontier of Adulthood, edited by Rick Settersten, Frank Furstenberg, and Ruben Rumbaut. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.   All data from the IPUMs data, various US Censuses                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                  

Growing Diversity (see Table 1 in Rumbaut and Komaie)

• Nearly one of every five Americans aged 18-34 today is an immigrant—and almost one of every four Americans aged 25-34 was born outside the United States. 

Marriage, Relationships, and Parenthood (see Tables 1 & 3 in Rumbaut and Komaie)

• Half (51%) of all young adults in 2006 aged 18-34 had never married, and only one-third (32%) had children.  Just over one-third (36%) were married, another 8% were cohabiting, and 5% were divorced or separated. 
  

• Married or cohabiting by age, 2006
  Age 18-24: 20.4% was married or cohabiting
  Age 25-29: 55% 
  Age 30-34: 69%

  Parenthood, 2006
  Age 18-24: 11% had children
  Age 25-29: 37%
  Age 30-35: 57%

Over time, youth have been less inclined to marry early [Smith. pdf]
 
Percent of 18-24 year olds never-married over time:

• 1973: 60.5%
• 1985: 73.8%
• 1997: 73.9
 
 

Prolonged education (see Tables 1, 3, 11, 13, 16 in Rumbaut and Komaie)

• 22% of 18–24-year-olds had not yet completed high school compared with 14% of 25-34 year olds.
• Signs that it is taking longer to gain a degree: Fewer than 10% of 18–24-year olds had graduated from college compared with approximately 30% of 25–34-year-olds.
• Women are more likely to gain a bachelor’s degree than men: 18.2% vs. 14.6%
  Women are also more likely to gain an advanced degree than men: 5.4% vs. 4.1%
• Asians are most likely to have a bachelor’s or advanced degree (Table 13).
• Hispanics aged 18-34 are most likely to have less than a high school education. Hispanic males (40.8%) are twice as likely as black males (18.5%) to have less than a high school degree (Table 13). However, social mobility increases with time in the United States. Slightly more than one-half of first-generation Hispanics have no high school degree, but that declines to 29% in the second generation and 21% in the third generation (Table 16).
   
  The higher the education, the fewer children and the higher one’s income (Table 11). Nearly three in ten (28%) young women (aged 18-24) with less than a high school degree had children, while only 3% of those with a bachelor’s degree had children.

Labor Force Participation (see Tables 1,  2, 13, 14 in Rumbaut and Komaie). See also charts below.

• Age 18-24: 68% were employed (37% full-time)
  Age 25-34: 81-82% (66% full-time)
• Although having the highest labor force participation rate (87%), young Latino men are mired in the lowest rungs of the U.S. labor market, with nearly two in three employed in low-wage labor, while one-half of Asian young men were employed in the highest status jobs (tables 13 & 14) .

Average Annual Incomes among Those Working (see Tables 3 & 4 in Rumbaut and Komaie)

Age 18-24: $15,533
Age 25-29: $30,330
Age 30-34: $37,871
Total Age Group (18-34): $27,458

• Based on prior year (2004) annual incomes, 18% of young adults age 18-24 had household incomes below the poverty line compared with a poverty rate of 12% for those ages 25-34.
• Among those employed, women work in fields with higher occupational statuses than men. However, at every age group among those employed, men have higher earnings than women, with the earnings gap widening with age.

Select profile of young adults 2006 by region of the country, including poverty, earnings, employment, education, etc.
Click here for accompanying figures and tables
[based on Rumbaut et al., Demographic Profile of Young Adults in the Five Cities]

• Following national trends, poverty among young adults is highest in the South
• Risk of poverty is highest among the youngest adults (18-24); poverty is highest in the South, regardless of age group
• Among racial-ethnic groups, whites still dominate, but Hispanics now outnumber blacks nationally, driven mainly by large Hispanic presence in West and to a lesser extent, the Northeast
• Between one-fourth and one-third of young adults aged 18-34 were living with their parents in 2006; rates are highest in Northeast
  
• South has fewest young adults in school, NE has most in school
• More youth in the NE have college degre while more young adults in the the South and West have dropped out of high school
• More women than men aged 18-34 are married and have children. Young adults in NE are least likely to be married or have children; those in the South are most likely
• Roughly 30% of young adults aged 18-34 nationwide were not working in 2006. Work status is fairly similar across the regions, but slightly more NE young adults are not working, likely because more are in school
• Young adults in the NE are more likely to work in higher status jobs while those in the Midwest more often work in low-wage jobs
• Family income is higher in the NE, although personal earnings of young adults are fairly similar across the regions
• Family income (parents) is generally higher among youth born in the 1980s than those born in the 1970s
  
• 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.
    
    

    [Tom Smith, in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 2005). [Smith chapter brief: pdf]

  See also A Snapshot of American High Four Decades: 1976; 1985; 1994; 2001 (data from Monitoring the Future project).
  See also The Changing Social Contract at the Transition to Adulthood, Connie Flanagan

(Fussell & Furstenberg, in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 2005).