Giving Compass' Take:

• The past five decades – spanning from the time when the Silent Generation (today, in their 70s and 80s) was entering adulthood to the adulthood of today’s Millennials – have seen large shifts in U.S. society and culture. 

• What can we learn from this data? How will the affect the future of not only our countries, but global communication and networking?

• Here's another example of the Millennial generation today.

In the past few decades, Americans, especially Millennials, have become more detached from major institutions such as political parties, religion, the military and marriage. At the same time, the racial and ethnic make-up of the country has changed, college attainment has spiked and women have greatly increased their participation in the nation’s workforce.

Our new interactive graphic compares the generations today and in the years that each generation was young (ages 21 to 36) to demonstrate the sea change in young adults’ activities and experiences that has occurred over the past 50 years.

  • Today’s young adults (Millennials ages 21 to 36 in 2017) are much better educated than the Silent Generation.
  • A greater share of Millennial women have a bachelor’s degree than their male counterparts – a reversal from the Silent Generation.
  • Young women today are much more likely to be working, compared with Silent Generation women during their young adult years.
  • Millennials today are more than three times as likely to have never married as Silents were when they were young.
  • Millennials are much more likely to be racial or ethnic minorities than were members of the Silent Generation.
  • Young Silent men were more than 10 times more likely to be veterans than Millennial men are today.
  • Greater shares of Millennials today live in metropolitan areas than Silents or Boomers did when they were young.

Read the full article on millennials by Richard Fry, Ruth Igielnik and Eileen Patten at Pew Research Center.