Married childfree millennials have a $120,000 net worth advantage

Business Insider

4 days ago

It turns out that some millennials have been able to get ahead — they just had to put a ring on it, while holding off on having kids.
A Business Insider analysis of new data from the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation finds that millennials who are married, but don't have children under 18 in the household, are sitting on net worths that exceed those of their parental, single, and divorced peers.
It's yet another point in favor of what's fast becoming a new version of the American dream: Living in a high-earning household without kids. Many of those high-net-worth millennials are likely DINKs, meaning that they're in dual-income households with no kids. Others may have arrangements like stay-at-home husbands or wives, where the couple is able to comfortably live off one earner.
This data is based on the most recent release of SIPP data; we looked at data from December 2023, which was the last month recipients were surveyed for this wave. We separated out Americans who were married, not a reference parent for any household children under 18, and then sorted by those who were ages 27 to 42 — the age bounds of millennials during the survey period.
Childfree and married millennials had a few demographic differences from the larger millennial cohort. They were, for instance, more likely to have a bachelor's degree or a post-graduate degree.
Married and childfree millennials were also more likely to be white than the wider millennial cohort, and far less likely to be Black.
There were also some key economic differences between married and childfree millennials and the larger millennial group; married and childfree millennials had on average slightly more credit card debt, carrying around $2,456 compared to $2,203 for all millennials. But married and childfree millennials were also more likely to have money socked away for retirement — the average value of their retirement accounts was around $71,886, which far exceeds the $48,408 of the average millennial's retirement accounts.
Of course, not all married and childfree millennials are sitting on large net worths. The net worths represent an average across the group, meaning a swath of married and childfree millennials have far less in the bank.
Some married and childfree Americans don't want to be in that position — as Business Insider has previously reported, one subset of DINKs would like to have children, but can't afford it, struggle with infertility and uncertainty over family planning, or are turned off by the lack of support for parents in the US.
It's also entirely possible that some of those surveyed millennials are biding their time and waiting to have children later in life, a rising trend among some in their generation. There's also another barrier for childfree and married millennials, who are already paying on average around $3,447 in rent or mortgage — the US just doesn't have the housing to accommodate a potentially growing family.
Even so, the numbers show it's paying for some millennials to get hitched, but not add to their families. And as Gen Zers think about their futures, financial security is top of mind, while growing their families isn't as high a priority — indicating that the ranks of the financially secure and childfree might only grow.