Multigenerational households have reached an all-time high
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Despite the end of the Great Recession, there’s been a surge in multigenerational households.
Both the number and share of Americans living in multigenerational family households has continued to rise in recent years, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. In 2014, a record 60.6 million people, or 19% of the U.S. population, lived in a multigenerational household, up from 42.4 million (17%) in 2009 and 27.5 million (12%) in 1980. Multigenerational families — households with two or more adult generations, or one that includes grandparents and grandchildren — is growing among nearly all racial groups and age groups, says D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer and editor at Pew.
There are some demographic reasons. The Asian and Hispanic populations are growing more rapidly than the white population, Cohn’s analysis of the latest U.S. Census Bureau data found, “and those groups are more likely than whites to live in multigenerational family households.” What’s more, foreign-born Americans are more likely than the U.S.-born people to live with multiple generations of family, and Asians and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be immigrants. Some 28% of Asians lived in multigenerational households versus 25% of Hispanics and African-Americans and 15% of Caucasians.
