According to our new projections, the number of US households is expected to increase by 8.6 million between 2025 and 2035, representing far less growth than in recent decades.
Record-high housing unaffordability, the role of immigration in housing costs, and more: our most popular blogs of 2024 explored a range of housing challenges.
The number of cost-burdened renter households reached a new record high last year, affecting more households across income levels and leaving the lowest-income households with less left over than ever before.
Rising insurance premiums, due in large part to climate change-fueled hazards, are an affordability stressor for homeowners already facing historically high home prices.
Joint Center for Housing Studies
of Harvard University
Our Center strives to improve equitable access to decent, affordable homes in thriving communities and conducts rigorous research to advance policy and practice.
This paper presents detailed projections for household growth in years 2025–2035 and 2035–2045 along with the data and methodology used to create them. The primary finding is that growth in the number of households in the US is expected to slow in the coming decades. Under the Center’s main projection, the number of households in the US is projected to rise by 8.6 million households, or approximately 860,000 per year, between 2025 and 2035. This would be less household growth than in any of the past three decades.
The number of cost-burdened renter households has reached a new record high, further deepening the affordability challenge that accelerated during the pandemic. Across all income groups, rental affordability has continued to worsen as a growing share of household income has been devoted to rent and cost burden rates have risen.
Demographic research frequently categorizes households by race and ethnicity using the characteristics of a single person rather than considering all household members. In this paper, we explore how this common method of assigning race/ethnicity might understate the diversity of US households. We consider the race/ethnicity of all adult household members to estimate how prevalent multi-race households are, how they differ from single-race households, and what their housing outcomes are.
