More than three-quarters of young adults ages 25 to 34 who have moved back home with their families during the Great Recession and the troubled economic years that followed say they’re satisfied with their living arrangements and upbeat about their future finances.

Those arrangements have benefited their parents as well: almost half of boomerang children say they have paid rent and almost nine-in-ten have helped with household expenses.

One reason young adults who are living with their parents may be relatively upbeat about their situation is that this has become such a widespread phenomenon. Among adults ages 25 to 34, 61% say they have friends or family members who have moved back in with their parents over the past few years because of economic conditions. Furthermore, three-in-ten parents of adult children (29%) report that a child of theirs has moved back in with them in the past few years because of the economy.

While young adults living at home may be satisfied with their situations, nearly eight-in-ten say they don’t currently have enough money to lead the kind of life they want, compared with 55% of their same-aged peers who aren’t living with their parents. Even so, large majorities of both groups (77% versus 90%) say they either have enough money now to lead the kind of life they want or expect they will in the future.

These findings are based on a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults nationwide conducted Dec. 6-19, 2011, that explores the family dynamics and economics of multi-generational living at a time when the number of multi-generational family households in the country continues to rise.

Read the full report for these findings:

• Who are the boomerang kids and how widespread a phenomenon do they represent?
• How living at home affects outlook, relationships
• The rise of multi-generational households
• The economics of multi-generational living
• Financial connections across generations

In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are. If current trends continue, the share of adults who are currently married will drop to below half within a few years. Other adult living arrangements-including cohabitation, single-person households and single parenthood-have all grown more prevalent in recent decades.

The Pew Research analysis also finds that the number of new marriages in the U.S. declined by 5% between 2009 and 2010, a sharp one-year drop that may or may not be related to the sour economy.

Read the full report for more detailed information on these subjects:

• Newlywed trends
• Share of Americans who are currently married by age group, race and education
• Age at which Americans marry
• Public attitudes towards marriage

See also our series of reports on the “Decline of Marriage.”

Large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives. This helped fuel the largest increase in modern history in the number of Americans living in multi-generational households. From 2007 to 2009, the total spiked from 46.5 million to 51.4 million.

Living with extended family appears to be a financial lifeline for many. Although their adjusted incomes overall are lower, the poverty rate among people living in multi-generational households is substantially smaller than for those in other households — 11.5% vs. 14.6% in 2009, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

Moreover, the potential benefits of living in multi-generational households are greatest for the groups that have been most affected by the Great Recession. Among the unemployed, the poverty rate in 2009 was 17.5% for those living in multi-generational households, compared with 30.3% for those living in other households. Members of other economically vulnerable groups — young adults, Hispanics and blacks — who live in extended families also experience sharply lower poverty rates than those in other households.

Read the full report for more details, including:

• The demographics of multigenerational households

• The increase in young adults moving back in with families

• Trends for racial and ethnic groups

• Levels of household income and poverty rates

• How income is shared in multigenerational households

Related Pew Reports:

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics

Childhood Poverty Among Hispanics Sets Record, Leads Nation

No Consensus About Whether Nation Is Divided Into ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’

Two Years of Economic Recovery: Women Lose Jobs, Men Find Them

How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America

The counts and characteristics of same-sex couples are among the most written-about data from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey. Yet, two decades after the Census Bureau began offering people the option to describe themselves as a same-sex “unmarried partner,” producing accurate numbers remains a challenge.

The quality of information about same-sex couples depends both on the questionnaire responses the Census Bureau receives, and the procedures the agency implements to collect and edit those responses. There have been changes to both during the years the bureau has been releasing same-sex couple data, and the agency has cautioned against comparing numbers from different years to produce trends.

The Census Bureau has just completed the release of state-by-state total counts of same-sex couples from the 2010 Census, which adds up to a national total of about 902,000. Later this year, the bureau will release a highly anticipated count of same-sex married couples from the 2010 Census, the first time it has done so from a decennial census. In conjunction with that release, the bureau will publish its own evaluation of data quality about same-sex couples. This posting describes what is known so far about data quality for both married and unmarried same-sex couples from past censuses, the American Community Survey and Census Bureau research.

The challenges of counting same-sex couples illustrate the difficulties of data collection and group identification in an era of rapid social change. The Census Bureau has a delicate balancing act as it tries to capture a demographic snapshot even as national norms are more akin to a motion picture.

Read the full article by D’Vera Cohn detailing the challenges of counting same-sex couples at pewsocialtrends.org. Keep up to date on population and demographic developments at All Things Census

Executive Summary

Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle in the United States. The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education — without college degrees — are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of census data suggests that less-educated adults are less likely to realize the economic benefits associated with cohabitation. The typical college-educated cohabiter is at least as well off as a comparably educated married adult and better off than an adult without an opposite-sex partner. By contrast, a cohabiter without a college degree typically is worse off than a comparably educated married adult and no better off economically than an adult without an opposite-sex partner. (Most adults without opposite-sex partners live with other adults or children.)

Among the 30- to 44-year-old U.S. adults who are the focus of this report, 7% lived with an opposite-sex partner in 2009, according to census data. The share is higher among adults without a college education (8%) than among those with college degrees (4%).

The proportion of adults who ever have cohabited is much larger than the share currently cohabiting, and it has grown to become a majority in recent decades, according to data from the National Survey of Family Growth. Among women ages 19-44, for example, 58% had ever lived with an opposite-sex unmarried partner in 2006-2008, up from 33% among a comparable group in 1987 (National Center for Marriage and Family Research, 2010).

This report finds that greater economic well-being is associated with cohabitation for adults with college degrees, but not for those without college degrees. The measurement used for economic well-being is median household income, which in this analysis has been adjusted for the size of the household and standardized to a household size of three.

Among college-educated adults, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($106,400 in 2009) slightly exceeded that of married adults ($101,160) and was significantly higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($90,067). However, among adults without college degrees, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($46,540) was well below that of married couples ($56,800) and was barely higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($45,033).

The Pew Research analysis finds that differences in employment rates and household living arrangements of cohabiters with and without college degrees help explain gaps in their comparative economic well-being. These differences include:

•  Among the college-educated, two-earner couples were more prevalent among cohabiters (78%) than married adults (67%) in 2009. By working more, cohabiters offset married adults’ higher median earnings.
• Among those without college degrees, two-earner couples were slightly less prevalent among cohabiters (55%) than among married adults (59%) in 2009. In addition to being more likely to work, these married adults have the advantage of higher median earnings.
• Among the college-educated, a much higher share of married adults (81%) than of cohabiters (33%) lived in a household with children in 2009. In addition, among those with children in the household, married adults tend to have more children. The greater presence of children in married-couple households may help explain the lower share of two-earner couples among married adults.
• Among adults without college degrees, the majority of both married adults (85%) and cohabiters (67%) have children in the household. The relatively large presence and number of children in the households of cohabiters without college degrees may reduce the extent to which both partners in such relationships can earn income.
• Whatever their partnership status, adults in households with children have significantly lower median household incomes than comparably educated adults in households without children. Cohabiting adults without college degrees are much more likely to be in a household with children than are college-educated cohabiters, diminishing their potential economic gains from cohabitation.
• The earnings of college-educated adults who live without opposite-sex partners constitute the bulk of their household income (88%). A college-educated cohabiter’s earnings typically make up 50% of the household income, suggesting that those who move in with a partner obtain a net boost to their household incomes.
• Among adults without college degrees, earnings of those who live without opposite-sex partners constitute 43% of their household income. Earnings of cohabiters make up 42% of household income, suggesting that those who move in with a partner do not obtain a net boost to their household incomes.
• Among adults who live without opposite-sex partners, differing household composition helps to explain why those with college degrees typically gain an economic boost from cohabitation but those without college degrees do not. Most of these adults live with others, such as their own parents, their children or roommates. The college-educated without opposite-sex partners are more likely to live alone (44% to 20%). They are less likely to live with other family members who may supply some of the household income — income that may be lost in a transition to cohabitation.

A voluminous body of social science research shows that marriage is associated with a variety of benefits for adults. In the words of one researcher: “For well over a century, researchers have known that married people are generally better off than their unmarried counterparts” (Nock, 2005). Yet in recent decades marriage rates have declined-particularly among less educated adults-as cohabitation rates have increased.

It also would seem that cohabitation would be associated with greater economic well-being than living without a partner because of the economies of scale achieved by combining two households. Yet adults without college degrees who cohabit are no better off than those who live without opposite-sex partners.

The findings in this report suggest that cohabitation plays a different role in the lives of adults with and without college degrees. For the most educated, living as an unmarried couple typically is an economically productive way to combine two incomes and is a step toward marriage and childbearing. For adults without college degrees, cohabitation is more likely to be a parallel household arrangement to marriage — complete with children — but at a lower economic level than married adults enjoy.

This report uses U.S. Census Bureau data to analyze the economic and household circumstances of opposite-sex cohabiters ages 30-44 as well as those of comparably educated married adults and adults without opposite-sex partners. The age range was chosen because it is a time of life when most adults have completed their education, gone to work and established their own households.

About 400,000 adults ages 30-44 are partners in same-sex unmarried couples, according to the 2009 American Community Survey, compared with 4.2 million who live with a partner of the opposite sex. Same-sex couples have distinctive patterns of income, education and household composition. They have higher median adjusted incomes ($99,204) than opposite-sex cohabiters ($54,179), married couples ($70,711) or adults without partners ($53,399). About half (48%) are college graduates, a notably higher share than for other adults. Less than a third (31%) live with children, a lower share than opposite-sex cohabiters.

The analysis of cohabiting couples in this report is restricted to opposite-sex unmarried partners. The analysis makes the assumption that these couples have the choice to marry or cohabit, which is not the case for most same-sex couples. There also is a dearth of data on marriage trends among same-sex couples, for whom the option to marry only recently became available in a limited number of venues.

In this report, same-sex unmarried partners are included in the category of adults with no partner. Although same-sex couples and adults with no partner differ in income, education and household composition, combining them in the same category does not change the findings about the relative economic conditions for adults in the three partnership status groups.

The first section examines the prevalence and growth of cohabitation, compared with marriage or living without a partner, by educational attainment. The second section analyzes the economic outcomes of adults by partnership status and educational attainment. The third section examines adults’ labor market characteristics to understand the comparative patterns of economic well-being. The fourth section looks at some differences in the types of households in which these adults live — again, by partnership status and educational attainment.

 Find the full report, including methodology and data sources at pewsocialtrends.org.