Is College Worth It?
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Between February and June 2020, the share of young adults who are neither enrolled in school nor employed has more than doubled.
The 30-year low reflects in part tight labor markets and falling unemployment, but also higher shares of young women at work or in school.
Through both recession and recovery, the share of young adults living in their parents’ home continues to rise. As of 2016, 15% of 25- to 35-year-old Millennials were living in their parents’ home.
Homeownership in America stands at its lowest level in at least 20 years. The decline has been more pronounced among households headed by young adults, blacks and those in the lower income tier.
Despite improvements in the labor market, Millennials today are less likely to be living independently of their families and establishing their own households than they were in the depths of the Great Recession.
The share of Americans who live in middle-income households has held steady since 2010 – a flat trend that might actually be good news.
The number of Americans living in multi-generational households, which spiked during the Great Recession, has risen to a record 57 million in 2012, including about one-in-four young adults ages 25-34.
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. […]
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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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