East Grand Rapids leads Michigan: 50.3% of households have children, nearly double the state’s 27.1%

East Grand Rapids and Hamtramck: about half of all households include children

Picture a school-day morning on a residential street in East Grand Rapids: lunch boxes on the counter, a parent hunting for the second shoe, a partner already backing out of the driveway. According to the latest five-year Census estimates, that scene plays out in 50.3% of East Grand Rapids households, the highest share of any of the 101 Michigan places in our data. Hamtramck is close behind at 48.7%.

Statewide, 27.1% of Michigan households have at least one person under 18 living in them. So in the two leading places, the share of homes with kids is almost double the state figure. At the other end, only 12.6% of households in Ferndale include anyone under 18, less than half the Michigan rate.

The spread matters because “family life” looks very different from one zip code to the next. A couple in one city may be surrounded by carpools and youth soccer; a couple a few miles away may be among the few households on their block with a car seat in the back.

What the data shows: Grand Rapids suburbs and inner-ring Detroit cities lead, college towns trail

Of the 101 places, 45 sit above the Michigan share of households with children, 55 sit below it, and one matches it exactly. The leaders cluster in two very different settings.

The first is the ring of established suburbs around Grand Rapids. Forest Hills (41.6%), Jenison (34.5%), Wyoming (34.4%), Cutlerville (31.3%) and Grandville (30.4%) all rank in the top 25, which is why Kent County contributes five places to that list. Forest Hills and Jenison are also among the most married and most owner-occupied places in the state, a link we examine in our report on homeownership and family life.

The second is a group of Wayne County cities with younger populations: Hamtramck, Dearborn (35.2%), Melvindale (35.1%), Romulus (33.7%), Inkster (32.7%) and Dearborn Heights (31.9%). Wayne County places hold eight of the top 25 spots, more than any other county. Several of these communities also have large immigrant populations, which we explore in our report on immigrant families across Michigan’s cities.

Oakland County shows both extremes. Beverly Hills (37.3%), Novi (34.9%), Troy (31.5%) and Rochester Hills (30.8%) are well above the state, while Ferndale, Wixom (16.6%), Madison Heights (17.2%) and Royal Oak (17.3%) are among the lowest ten. If you live in Oakland County, the “typical” household depends heavily on which side of a city line you are on; our Oakland County overview puts those cities side by side.

The bottom of the list is shaped by college towns and older communities. East Lansing (15.0%), Mount Pleasant (16.1%), Ann Arbor (17.1%), Ypsilanti (18.3%) and Marquette (15.1%) are home to large student populations, who mostly live without children. Alpena (18.8%) and Grand Haven (18.2%) have older populations, where more households are couples or individuals whose children have grown. Our analysis of median age across Michigan cities shows the same places at the old and young ends of the age range.

Detroit, at 27.8%, sits almost exactly at the state figure.

Michigan places with the highest and lowest share of households with children

Ranked by the percentage of households with one or more people under 18. The full ranking of all 101 places appears in the chart above.

Michigan overall: 27.1%.

How we measured households with children

The figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2024 5-year estimates, covering responses collected from January 2020 through December 2024, retrieved through the Census Reporter API. The specific table is B11005, Households by Presence of People Under 18 Years by Household Type. We divided households with one or more people under 18 by total households in each place and rounded to one decimal.

The data covers 101 Michigan cities, villages and Census-designated places (such as Forest Hills, Jenison and Okemos) with at least 10,000 residents. A “household” is everyone living in one housing unit. The person under 18 can be the householder’s own child, a grandchild, a niece or nephew, a foster child or another young person living there. People in dorms and other group quarters are not counted as households.

Limits of a single percentage

• It counts homes, not children. A city where 30% of households have one child each and a city where 30% have three children each look identical here.
• It mixes many family types. Married couples, single parents, grandparents raising grandchildren and multigenerational homes all count the same way.
• It is a five-year average. The estimate blends 2020 through 2024, so rapid recent changes in a neighborhood may not show yet.
• Margins of error apply. For smaller places, the true value may be a few points higher or lower. Treat differences of one or two points between similar cities as roughly equal.
• Students change the denominator. College towns look “childless” partly because so many households are student renters, not because local families are scarce.

What a house full of kids can mean for the couple in the middle of it

Nothing in this data says that families in high-share cities are struggling, or that adults in low-share cities are better off. Demographics describe where people live, not how their relationships are going.

What the data does show is that a large share of Michigan’s adults are doing their partnering and their parenting at the same time. For many couples, that stage brings real joy alongside a quieter shift: conversations become logistics, date night becomes a shared nap, and the relationship that started the family can slip to the bottom of the list. Imagine two parents in a busy home who are kind to each other all day yet realize, at 10 p.m., that they have not talked about anything except pickup times in weeks.

That pattern is common and often workable. Some families sort it out on their own; others find it helpful to have a neutral space to talk. Family therapy can include children and other relatives, while couples therapy focuses on the two adults. Iryna Morhunova-Sutton, LLMFT, works with individuals, couples and families, and meets with clients online by video from anywhere in Michigan, so a session can happen after bedtime without arranging a sitter. You can read more about how online therapy in Michigan works before deciding whether it fits.

When this report is updated

We refresh these rankings when the Census Bureau publishes the next ACS 5-year release, usually late in the year. Rankings may shift as the 2020 data rolls out of the five-year window. For the bigger picture of where Michigan’s couples and families live, see our Michigan hub.