Multigenerational Families: A Local Look

Both the New York Times and the PEW Research Center recently have looked at multi-generational families and thier role in the local social fabric. According to PEW, a record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population of the United States, lived in multi-generational family households in 2012, double the number who lived in such households in 1980.



For their report, multi-generational households included households with:

• Two generations: parents (or in-laws) and adult children ages 25 and older (or children-in-law); either generation can “head” the household
• Three generations: parents (or in-laws), adult children (or children-in-law), grandchildren
• “Skipped” generations: grandparents and grandchildren, without parents
• More than three generations

This is a more expansive definition than used by the Census Bureau, which basically only calls a household "multigenerational" if it has three or more generations of a family living together.

Below is an infographic using the more expanded definition for our region. The data comes from the 2012 ACS Five Year Estimates based on the PUMs data for our region. The PUMS data covers about 80% of the region's population, excluding basically the southern most portions of Oneida and Herkimer Counties.

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