The typical first-timer now rents for six years before buying a home, up from 2.6 years in the early 1970s, according to a new analysis.

WASHINGTON — Short of cash and unsettled in their careers, young Americans are waiting longer than ever to buy their first homes.

The typical first-timer now rents for six years before buying a home, up from 2.6 years in the early 1970s, according to a new analysis by the real estate data firm Zillow. The median first-time buyer is age 33 — in the upper range of the millennial generation, which roughly spans ages 18 to 34. A generation ago, the median first-timer was about three years younger.

The delay reflects a trend that cuts to the heart of the financial challenges facing millennials: Renters are struggling to save for down payments. Increasingly, too, they’re facing delays in some key landmarks of adulthood, from marriage and children to a stable career, according to industry and government reports.

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These shifts help explain why homeownership, long a source of middle-class identity and economic opportunity, has started to decline. The share of the US population who own homes has slid to 63.4 percent, a 48-year low, according to the Census Bureau.

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And when young adults do sign the deed, their purchase price is now substantially more, relative to their income, than it was decades ago. First-time buyers are paying a median price of $140,238, nearly 2.6 times their income. In the early 1970s, the starter home was just 1.7 times income.

Millennials are ‘‘still very interested in buying a house, but they’re delaying that decision,’’ said Svenja Gudell, chief economist at Zillow. ‘‘Once they start having kids, they begin looking for homes. We’re also finding that — given how much rental rates are currently rising — a lot of folks are having a hard time saving for a down payment and qualifying for a mortgage.’’

Rising rental prices have complicated the task of socking away money for a down payment. Rental prices nationally have grown at roughly twice the pace of average hourly wage growth, which was 2.1 percent over the past year.

A result is that those prices are consuming more income. A striking 46 percent of renters ages 25 to 34 — the core of the millennial population — spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent, up from 40 percent a decade earlier, according to a report by Harvard University’s Joint Center of Housing Studies. (The housing industry generally regards a figure above 30 percent as financially burdensome.)