America's Families - Multigenerational Families

Census 2000 recorded 3.9 million American households, or 4% of all households, that were composed of three or more generations living together. In 2000 there were 2.6 million multigenerational families that included children and grandchildren living with the householder. Nearly 1.3 million multigenerational families included the householder, his or her children, and his or her parents. Another seventy-eight thousand households, about 2% of all multigenerational family households, consisted of four generations. (See Table 1.12.)

The Census Bureau reported that multigenerational families were most common in areas where recent immigrants

TABLE 1.11

Unmarried partner households, by sex of partners, 2000
SOURCE: Adapted from "QT-P18. Marital Status by Sex, Unmarried-Partner Households, and Grandparents as Caregivers, 2000," in American Fact Finder, U.S. Census Bureau, http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP18&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U&-_lang=en&-_sse=on (accessed August 5, 2004)
Total	5,230,703	100
Male and female	4,571,992	87.4
Both male	332,645	6.4
Both female	326,066	6.2

lived with relatives, housing shortages or high costs forced families to share living space, and teenage birth rates were high. As older adults lived longer, the need for family caregiving also created multigenerational households.

In 2000 children under age eighteen represented 26.3% of the population. They lived in diverse households. While 90% lived with at least one parent, 6.1% resided with a grandparent, 2% lived with other relatives, 0.4% lived with a foster family, and 1.4% lived with other nonrelatives. The South had the highest percentage of children living with grandparents (7.3%), while more children in the West (2.8%) lived with other relatives. (See Table 1.13.)