Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
With an aging population and a generation of young adults struggling to achieve financial independence, the burdens and responsibilities of middle-aged Americans are increasing. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 40s and 50s have a parent age 65 or older and are either raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child [...]
The record generation gap that played out at the voting booth in the last two presidential elections is echoed by large differences by age in attitudes about the tradeoff between reducing the federal deficit and preserving entitlements for older adults, according to a new nationwide Pew Research Center survey. Older adults by a lopsided [...]
If there’s supposed to be a stigma attached to living with mom and dad through one’s late twenties or early thirties, today’s “boomerang generation” didn’t get that memo.
Young adults hit hard by the recession. A plurality of the public believes young adults, rather than middle-aged or older adults, are having the toughest time in today’s economy.
Households headed by older adults have made dramatic gains relative to those headed by younger adults in their economic well-being over the past quarter of a century.
In the last four national elections, generational differences have mattered more than they have in decades. According to the exit polls, younger people have voted substantially more Democratic than other age groups in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006.
Today’s 18 to 29 year olds – members of the so-called Millennial Generation – see parenthood and marriage differently than today’s thirty-somethings (members of Generation X) did back when they were in their late teens and twenties, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey findings. Unlike their older counterparts, Millennials value parenthood much more than marriage.
One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession.
The multi-generational American family household is staging a comeback — driven in part by the job losses and home foreclosures of recent years, but more so by demographic changes that have been gathering steam for decades.
In 2008, a record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another. Rates varied by region, by state and racial group.
A new national survey focuses on American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium. These young people have begun to forge their generational personality: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.
The American work force is graying — and not just because the American population itself is graying. Older adults are staying in the labor force longer, and younger adults are staying out of it longer.
They have different values, beliefs and lifestyles, but young and old today are disagreeing without being disagreeable. Both also share a fondness for Woodstock-era rock and roll.
If a latter-day Ponce de Leon were to search for a modern fountain of youth, he’d do well to explore America’s West. There he’d find the highest concentration of older adults in the United States who don’t think of themselves as old.
There is a sizable gap between the expectations that young and middle-aged adults have about old age and the actual experiences reported by older adults themselves.
In the midst of a recession that has taken a heavy toll on many nest eggs, just over half of all working adults ages 50 to 64 say they may delay their retirement — and another 16% say they never expect to stop working.
Older adults are less likely than younger and middle-aged adults to say that in the past year they have cut back on spending; suffered losses in their retirement accounts; or experienced trouble paying for housing or medical care.
The cohort of young adults who have grown up with personal computers, cell phones and the internet and are now taking their place in a world where the only constant is rapid change.
More than three quarters of today’s workers expect to work for pay even after they retire. Of those who feel this way, most say it’s because they’ll want to, not because they’ll have to.
As the oldest of the nation’s 75 million baby boomers approach the age of 60, many are looking ahead to their own retirement while balancing a full plate of family responsibilities.
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About Pew Research Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
