Renter Households Amid Rising Rents: 2019–2023

In this Economic Commentary, I assess how households in the United States who rent their primary residence managed rent inflation from 2019 through 2023, a span which saw the highest year-over-year rent growth in recent history. Using publicly available datasets, I look at renters across a variety of demographic groups, to determine who was most affected by rising rents. The results indicate that, overall, the median renter saw zero growth in their real residual income (income after rent payments adjusted for inflation). However, there was substantial heterogeneity across groups. The top third of renters by income also experienced no real residual income growth, but the bottom third of renters by income saw their real residual income fall by over 7 percent per year from 2019 through 2023, or by more than 25 percent for that four-year period.