Millennials Love the Burbs, Part 2

A couple of days ago I wrote about “the myth of the urban millennial.” More generally, I’ve also been making the case that millennials are pretty similar to past generations, and part of that similarity has to do with their preference of where to live. But how do I know what their real preference is? Maybe lots of them want to live in big cities and the only reason they don’t is because of a housing shortage that’s driven up prices. A Twitter reader asks a reasonable question:

The answer here comes mostly from survey data: if there were a big mismatch, you’d expect to find lots of millennials who don’t live in cities but say they want to. However, that’s not what you find. Here are several examples, all for 18-29 year-olds:

  • In a 2011 survey by the National Association of Realtors, 33 percent of millennials lived in cities but only 31 percent wanted to. Conversely, 40 percent lived in suburbs but 42 percent wanted to.
  • In a 2014 survey by Fannie Mae, 90 percent of millennial renters said they would eventually buy a home.
  • In a 2015 survey by the National Association of Home Builders, two-thirds of millennials said they would prefer to buy a home in a suburb, while only 10% wanted a home in the center of a city.
  • In a 2018 survey from Gallup, 29 percent of millennials lived in big cities but only 17 percent wanted to live there. Conversely, 22 percent lived in suburbs but 39 percent wanted to live there.

This isn’t bulletproof evidence of anything, and there are some surveys that produce more complicated results. What’s more, there’s also some evidence of a small rise in the preference for urban living over the past couple of decades.

That said, the main finding of nearly every survey on the subject is that millennials mostly want to live in suburbs, and as they grow older that preference increases. There’s hardly any evidence at all suggesting that there’s a huge pent-up demand for city living that’s going unmet.

Obviously there are local exceptions to this finding.¹ Without even bothering to look, I think we can assume that the Bay Area has way less housing than it needs. The same is true of a small number of other cities that have shown big housing price increases over the past 30 years:

The average increase in the cost of housing (relative to income) is about 5 percent for all cities since 1990, and only half a dozen cities have seen increases of more than 15 percent. Put this together with survey data and rental vacancy rates and there’s little evidence of a huge surge of millennials who want to move to cities but can’t. In fact, just the opposite.

¹Though, surprisingly, not demographic ones. There’s a higher preference for city living among liberals, the young, and the college educated. However, even in these demographics there’s still a substantially higher preference for suburbs than for cities.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate