The young Americans – born after 1996 – may still not have been branded with a consensual name as a generation but they are set to be the most diverse and the best-educated yet, a new report reveals.
The generation succeeds Millennials as the newest group of young Americans, and has been variously named as Generation Z, the iGen or Homelanders while the Pew Research Center, which this week released its findings, calls them “post-Millennials.”
According to the Pew analysis, the “post-Millennial” generation is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation with non-Hispanic whites between the ages of 6 and 21 having a bare 52% majority. Most of these young people are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest post-Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at that age.
So, what is shaping the attributes of the post-Millennials?
The educational attainment of their parents and changing immigration patterns. The parents of the post-Millennials are more educated than parents of the previous generations, according to the report.
The educational attainment of the post-Millennial Hispanics are an interesting part of the picture.
A gathering of young Pakistani-Americans and leaders in Springfield Va. February, 2018 Photo: Views and News
According to findings around12% of post-Millennial Hispanics were born outside the U.S., compared with 24% of Millennial Hispanics in 2002. Previous research has shown that second-generation Hispanic youth tend to go further in school than foreign-born Hispanic youth.
“That is borne out in this analysis, as 61% of second-generation Hispanics ages 18 to 20 who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college in 2017, compared with 40% of their foreign-born counterparts. Overall, the share of post-Millennial Hispanics enrolled in college is significantly higher than the rate for Millennials in 2002 (55% vs. 34%, among 18- to 20-year-olds no longer in high school).”
As for diversity, a bare majority (52%) of post-Millennials are non-Hispanic white. One-in-four are Hispanic, significantly higher than the share of Millennials who were Hispanic in 2002.
The share of post-Millennials who are black (14%) is nearly identical to the share of Millennials who were black at a comparable age (15%). Black representation among the nation’s youth has changed little since the early Boomers in 1968, the report says.
Here are some other interesting points in the report:
“Asians account for 6% of the post-Millennial generation, up slightly from the 4% of Millennials in 2002 who were Asian. The remaining 4% of post-Millennials are non-Hispanics of another racial identity, mainly youth of two or more races.
“Though post-Millennials are more likely to be Hispanic and Asian compared with prior generations, they are not more likely, at this point, to be immigrants. Some 7% of post-Millennials are foreign born, as were 8% of Millennials in 2002. However, post-Millennials are more likely to be U.S. born of at least one foreign-born parent (22%) compared with Millennials in 2002 (15%).3
“In terms of sheer numbers, the Millennial generation was shaped to a much larger extent by young immigrants than the post-Millennials have been. When Millennials were ages 6 to 21 in 2002, they numbered 65.3 million.4 Their ranks that year included 5.0 million immigrants. By contrast, only about 4.4 million of the 66.5 million post-Millennials are immigrants – a pattern that more closely mirrors the experience of Gen X.
“Even with the diminished flow of immigrants into the U.S., the racial and ethnic diversity of the post-Millennial generation is expected to increase in future years as new immigrants join their numbers. Today’s 6- to 21-year-olds are projected to become majority nonwhite in 2026 (when they will be ages 14 to 29), according to Census Bureau projections.”
