Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The number of young adults is increasing, not declining, and a larger share of them are living in cities.

On Monday, The New York Times’s "The Upshot" published a story by Conor Dougherty: “Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost from the Young.” It questions whether the revival in city living is going to ebb as Millennials age, and as the number of people turning 25 decreases. In our view, the story offers two mistaken premises: first, that the growth of young adults in cities has been driven primarily by the large size of the Millennial generation, and second, that the affinity of young adults for cities is waning. Our research shows that neither of these premises is true. The movement of young adults to the city has been gathering steam for more than 25 years, and the number of young adults in cities was actually increasing during the 1990s—at a time when the number of 25- to 34-year-olds nationally was actually declining. And the relative preference of young adults for city living continues to increase.

The argument that as Millennials age they will increasingly move to the suburbs mistakenly conflates life-cycle effects with generational change. As individuals age, the likelihood that they’ll live in different places changes. After high school, there’s a large migration to college towns. Young adults starting out in their careers are disproportionately likely to rent and live in cities, compared to other Americans. As they get older, find partners, and have children, they’re more likely to own homes and live in the suburbs. This general pattern of succession holds for most recent generations as they age. But what’s different—and important—is how many people are in each generation, and how long they remain in each stage in this process. What’s happening now is that today’s young adults—the so-called Millennial generation—are both more numerous than the immediately preceding generation, and are demonstrating a greater propensity to spend a larger share of their early adult years living in cities. That’s the essence of what our research (and that of many others) shows has been happening. More From How Urban Geometry Creates Neighborhood Identity

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Who Pays the Price of Inclusionary Zoning? The Upshot story takes issue with this thesis in two respects. First, building on an argument advanced by USC’s Dowell Meyers—which we addressed when it first came out—the article says that the fortunes of cities will wane because the number of persons turning 25 years of age will decline slightly in the next decade. Second, the story says that as individual Millennials get older, they’ll tend to move to the suburbs in greater numbers. The essence of the Upshot story is two claims: (1) that the impact of Millennials on cities will decline because their numbers will decrease, and (2) that their propensity to choose to live in urban settings will decline. Let’s consider each of these ideas in turn.

Numbers The number of 25- to 34-year-old Millennials will increase by about 3 million over the next 7 years; this is the stage in the life cycle when they are most likely to live in cities. Is the move to cities being buoyed by the rising number of Millennials, and will their numbers decline soon, and therefore cause a decline in cities? What’s interesting is that in 2015—for the first time—Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) constitute all of the persons aged 25 to 34. At the time of the last decennial census (2010), about half of the 25- to 34-year-old age group was composed of people in the tail end of Generation X, and half were the early wave of Millennials. So strikingly, what the Census data show is that the total number of 25- to 34-year-olds in the US will increase from now through 2024. This chart shows the Census Bureau’s estimates of population aged 25 to 34 based on historical data through 2014 and its projections through 2035. During the 1990s the number of 25- to 34-year-olds actually declined as Baby Boomers aged out of this age group and were gradually replaced by the numerically smaller Generation X. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of Gen-Xer 25- to 34-year-olds increased slowly, with all of the aggregate increase in this age group being recorded after 2008. So, to the extent there was a movement back to the city in the 1990s, and the first half of 2000–2010, it was propelled not by an aggregate increase in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds in the nation, but the changing relative preference of young adults for urban locations. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... So, what we—and others—have recorded as the movement of young adults back into cities has, until very recently, had little to do with the size (or preferences) of the Millennial generation. In fact, as they turn 25, and as they now dominate this age cohort, the next decade will be the time when the Millennial generation’s effect on cities is most fully felt. Rather than declining, the number of 25- to 34-year-olds in the United States will increase each year from now through 2024, rising from 44.1 million in 2015 to 47.6 million in 2024. In reality, the Millennial wave of urbanism is just now hitting the beach. The outlook after 2024 (when the 25- to 34-year-olds will increasingly be “post-Millennials”) is not a dramatic demographic collapse. Rather than a peak, the young adult population will stabilize at a fairly high plateau above 47 million 25- to 34-year-olds through 2035. So there is little basis for forecasting a decline in the key population group that has driven urban growth. Preferences With each passing year, 25- to 34-year-olds, especially those with a four-year college degree or more education, are more likely to live in close-in urban neighborhoods than other Americans. Are young adults becoming less likely to live in cities? At City Observatory, we’ve tracked the carefully tracked the location of urban residents in America by age group over the past three decades. We’ve measured the relative preferences of young adults for close-in urban neighborhoods (census tracts within three miles of the center of the central business district). The relative preference is the probability that a young adult will live in a close-in neighborhood compared to the probability than any other resident of any age would live in such a neighborhood. These figures are drawn from Table 5 of our Young and Restless report; we’ve computed relative preference by dividing the probability that a person aged 25 to 34 lives within a three-mile radius of the center of the CBD of one of the 51 largest metropolitan areas, and compared it to the probability that the average resident of a metropolitan area live in this radius. If 11 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds live in the 3 mile radius, and 10 percent of the population as a whole lives inside that radius, the relative preference is 10 percent (11 percent/10 percent)=110 percent, meaning that a 25- to 34-year-old is 10 percent more likely than the typical resident to live in this area.