Richard Fry, Author at Pew Research Center

short readsFeb 28, 2014

For Millennials, a bachelor’s degree continues to pay off, but a master’s earns even more

Millennials are the nation’s most educated generation in history in terms of finishing college. But despite the stereotype that today’s recent college graduates are largely underemployed, the data show that this generation of college grads earns more than ones that came before it.
short readsFeb 6, 2014

New census data show more Americans are tying the knot, but mostly it’s the college-educated

Marriage is back – at least, a little bit, and with some caveats.
short readsOct 18, 2013

Millennials still lag in forming their own households

Though the nation is officially four years into “economic recovery,” a new Pew Research Center analysis of recently released Census data suggests that most Millennials are still not setting out on their own.
short readsSep 26, 2013

Household wealth has yet to recover

Until the housing market and home equity levels fully recover, the typical American household still has a ways to go.
short readsSep 24, 2013

The growing economic clout of the college educated

For the first time on record, nearly one out of every two dollars in aggregate U.S. household income went to the college educated.
short readsSep 18, 2013

Four takeaways from Tuesday’s Census income and poverty release

On Tuesday the Census Bureau released its annual trove of data on income, poverty and health insurance in 2012. Here were some of the key findings on household income: New data show that median household income has stagnated for the longest period since the government began collecting such data in 1967. In 2012 the median […]
reportAug 1, 2013

A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, the highest share in at least four decades. The number of young adults doing so has risen by 3 million since the start of the start of the recession in 2007, an increase driven by a combination of economic, educational and cultural factors.
reportMay 9, 2013

Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment

I. Overview A record seven-in-ten (69%) Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, two percentage points higher than the rate (67%) among their white counterparts,[1. Because the microdata for the October 2012 Current Population Surevey are not yet publicly available, a standard error for these rates cannot be […]
reportApr 23, 2013

A Rise in Wealth for the Wealthy; Declines for the Lower 93%

During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau […]
reportFeb 21, 2013

Young Adults After the Recession: Fewer Homes, Fewer Cars, Less Debt

After running up record debt-to-income ratios during the bubble economy of the 2000s, young adults shed substantially more debt than older adults did during the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath—mainly by virtue of owning fewer houses and cars, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board and other government data. […]