• For the first time in several decades, U.S. population is growing at a faster rate than U.S. households. With Baby Boomers well past their peak household-formation years, and new immigrants fueling growth, places that are losing population have less of a household “buffer” to sustain housing demand and tax base.
  
  
• Married couples with children accounted for just over one in five U.S. households in 2008, less than half their share in 1970. These households declined in number during the 2000s, as non-family households—mostly people living alone—grew at a rapid clip to account for more than one in three households in 2008.
  
  
• Many metro areas with already-high shares of married couples with children experienced strong growth in these households in the 2000s. In contrast to these “married with children” magnets like Raleigh, Boise, and Austin, Northern industrial metro areas like Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown saw their married couples with children decline by at least one-sixth over the eight-year period.
  
  
• Many fast-growing cities in the South and West added larger families in the 2000s, even as declining cities in the Midwest shed them. Cities such as Charlotte, Bakersfield, and Lakeland added households of all types, including married couples with children. Cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh lost all types of households, but losses were more modest among their aging non-family households.
  
  
• People living alone and non-married-couple families are the fastest-growing household types in suburbs. A majority of married-couple families of all races and ethnicities live in the suburbs today. But as their share of households declined to one-quarter or less in all types of suburbs, non-families became the most prominent suburban household type by 2008.
  

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