Massachusetts is home to 7 million people from all walks of life. The median age is about 40, but there are two generations that make up an outsized portion of the population: Baby Boomers, now age 60 – 80 years old, make up 22% of population; and Millennials (born 1980 – 1999) another 27%. As we’ll see throughout this chapter and the rest of the plan, the housing needs and choices of these two generations will have an outsized impact on future housing planning.
Massachusetts residents have diverse housing needs and situations. About 3.5% live in dormitories, nursing homes, correctional facilities, shelters, and other “group quarters” where residents don’t have their own separate living unit. While most of the discussion about housing is about people in housing units, we also need to consider the needs of people in group quarters as they transition into or out of permanent housing.
The rest of the population is considered to be living in a household. One household includes everyone living together in a single housing unit. There are all kinds of households in Massachusetts! Nuclear families, empty nesters, roommates, people living alone, couples with no kids, and multigenerational households are just a few examples of households within our State. As we’ll see throughout this plan, housing needs and household characteristics change as people age, so there is a need to ensure we support life cycle housing that offers housing options for all generations of residents.
A single household includes everyone living there, including people living with roommates or family members, even if they would rather live alone; as well as ‘doubled up’ households with multiple ‘subfamilies’ and overcrowded households. These households or would-be households that don’t have a home of their own are what we call “latent demand” and considering their needs is important when setting production goals.
While there is an endless variety of households, we define three basic household types:
- Families with children – this is any household with one or more adult and children under the age of 18 This includes everything from a single parent to a large multigenerational family.
- Multiple Adults, No Children – any households with two or more adults and no person under the age of 18. This encompasses married and unmarried couples, roommates, and other forms of group living.
- People living alone – any household with a single occupant.
Households change with age. Most people in their 20s live with roommates, a partner, or alone; as they get older, they’re more likely to be head or part of a household with children; past age 65, most older adults either live alone or are members of small households with no kids. In other words, housing demand is not just a function of people moving here or starting households but also evolving needs as individuals and families age and grow. When larger generations such as boomers and millennials all reach certain stages, it has an outsized influence on housing demand. It’s worth looking at how this has played out since 2000.
In the year 2000 the Baby Boomer generation formed an outsized number of households to support their growing families. They constituted 789,000 family households. The state had 1.4 million kids under the age of 18 in households. But in the intervening years, those kids have grown up and the Boomers are well past 60 years old.
In the decade after 2010, the number of Baby Boomer families with children declined by 96,000 households. These Boomers didn’t go away—they became empty nesters. Over that same period, Gen X and early Millennial households were changing as well. They transitioned from roommates to parents. People born 1965 – 1985 formed 155,000 new family families with children after 2010, and fewer people were living as couples or with roommates. Since Gen X had fewer children, later than Baby Boomers, they formed fewer families and the number of children in the state declined by 52,000 over ten years.
More recently, millennials have started forming households at a rapid clip, and their needs have become a major driver of net housing demand. From 2010 – 2020, younger Millennials (born 1986 – 1995) formed about 314,000 new households, equivalent to 12.3% of the existing households in 2010. Being larger than the Gen X band, Millennials may push up the number of family households as they age. Based on current birth rates for each age group, forecasts are that the number of families or children will not rebound to the same levels they were at back in 2000.