Another tax credit won’t fix what Sunday schools used to teach
March 13, 2026
The American dream of owning a home — a yard, a fence, a stake in the neighborhood — is slipping out of reach for many young adults. Policymakers keep treating this as a pure affordability problem. Prices, interest rates, and down payments are all important, but the real culprit lies beneath the numbers: family formation, especially marriage.
First-time buyers made up just 21% of home purchases last year, the lowest share on record. The median first-time buyer is now 40 — up from 33 in 2021 and 29 in 1981. Census data show homeownership for Americans ages 25-34 at about 35%, roughly 19 percentage points lower than in 1980, when mortgage rates were much higher.
