Millennials and the Changing Economics and Demographics

What's a millennial?
"The cohort of 18- to 34-year-olds in 2016 includes people born between 1982 and 1998, which roughly corresponds to the millennial generation. There is no official start and end date for when millennials were born."And to complicate things," the cohort of 18- to 34-year-olds in 1975 includes people born between 1941 and 1957, encompassing members of the silent generation (born 1928 to 1945) as well as some baby boomers (born 1946 to 1964)."

The Changing Economics and Demographics 
of Young Adulthood: 1975–2016 By Jonathan Vespa Issued April 2017, U.S. Census Bureau 

Study take-aways:

• Most of today’s Americans believe that educational and economic accomplishments are extremely important milestones of adulthood. In contrast, marriage and parenthood rank low: over half of Americans believe that marrying and having children are not very important in order to become an adult. 

These trends align with research showing that less than 10 percent of men and women think that people need to have children to be very happy in life.2 

• Young people are delaying marriage, but most still eventually tie the knot. In the 1970s, 8 in 10 people married by the time they turned 30. Today, not until the age of 45 have 8 in 10 people married. What these trends indicate is that young adults are not necessarily giving up on marriage. They are waiting longer. 

• More young people today live in their parents’ home than in any other arrangement: 1in 3 people, or about 24 million18- to 34-year-olds, lived in their parents’ home in 2015.

• In 2005, the majority of young adults lived independently in their own household, which was the predominant living arrange- ment in 35 states. A decade later, by 2015, the number of states where the majority of young people lived indepen- dently fell to just six.

• More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder. In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 per- cent of young men. (Incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars.)

• Between 1975 and 2016, the share of young women who were homemakers fell from 43 percent to 14 percent of all women aged 25 to 34. 

• Of young people living in their parents’ home, 1 in 4 are idle, that is they neither go to school nor work. This figure represents about 2.2 million 25- to 34-year-olds. 

Result:

young people are living in more diverse arrangements than at any point in the last 40 years making customization and personalization even more critical.