205
Fewer young people are meeting these 5 milestones typically associated with adulthood (www.cbsnews.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
75 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Fewer young adults are achieving economic and family milestones typically associated with adulthood, according to a recent working paper from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to the working paper, "Changes in Milestones of Adulthood," almost half of all young adults in 1975 had reached four milestones associated with adulthood: moving out of one's parents' home, getting a job, getting married and having a child.

Five decades on, that progression has changed dramatically. The share of young adults that have followed the traditional pathway to adulthood has dropped to less than a quarter, according to the paper.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 20 hours ago

parents' home, getting a job, getting married and having a child.

Grouping those stats is pretty much clickbait as they're completely different. This is the data from the paper:

In 2005, living away from parents was the most commonly experienced milestone, with about 84% of 25-34 year olds living independently. By 2023, this percentage declined to 81%. Labor force participation became the most common marker of adulthood, with about 86% of young adults reporting being in the labor force in 2023. The share of young adults who completed their education by attaining a high school or college degree increased by 9 percentage points between 2005 to 2023, from 74% to 83%. Family formation milestones, on the other hand, were experienced less often. In 2005, about 62% of young adults had ever married, a share that declined by 18 percentage points to 44% by 2023. Similarly, the proportion of young adults who lived with a child in the household decreased by 16 percentage points from 55% to 39% over this 18-year period.

Which shows that: yeah, most young adults have a job and most young adults move out of their parents' home. It's really only the family formation milestones that are down. (Who can blame us though, in this economy)

this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
205 points (100.0% liked)

News

31674 readers
1832 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
rjc@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
gedaliyah@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world