Cambridge has surpassed its peak historical population of 120,740 in the 1950s, city demographers said. The city had 121,186 residents as of 2024.
The Human Rights Commission heard this month about a range of findings on age and sex; households and families; race, ethnicity and ancestry; immigration; income and poverty; and disability from Community Development staffers Scott Walker, senior manager for data services for Cambridge, and Roshni Wadhwani, a planning data analyst.
“It kind of curves down to low points in the ’80s and ’90s,” Walker said of the city’s population. “It was a time of deindustrialization. It was a time of people moving out of cities and moving into the suburbs.”
That started to turn around in the 2000s and people returned to cities. “The economy started to change in Cambridge as high-tech industries started to move in – biotechnology, those sorts of things,” Walker said. That attracted high-wage jobs, drawing residents and spurring development.
Much of the data presented March 5 was from the American Community Survey, an annual survey that estimates from population samples, with some material from the decennial U.S. census – an actual count showing the population in Cambridge was 118,403.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which produces population estimates and projections, sees Cambridge rising to about 140,000 people in 2050 not including those in group quarters such as dorms and nursing homes, Walker said. (As of 2024, around 14 percent of Cambridge’s population lived in group quarters. If this percentage holds steady into 2050, the full population of the city would be around 162,790, a 37.5 percent increase from the census figure of 2020.)
Federal policies have caused a dramatic downturn in immigration from a peak in 2024, though, which “might cause us to change our expectations of population growth,” Walker said.
There were 58,966 homes in Cambridge as of last year, the city said, of which 9,021 (or 15.3 percent) were affordable. The figure, as of July, included homes under construction.
An Envision Cambridge master planning process set a goal in 2018 of increasing the housing supply by 12,500 units by 2030. Last year, the city’s annual housing inventory put homes built since 2018 at 3,104; an online dashboard identified the effort as “falling behind.”
Multifamily zoning and changes voted through for major corridors and squares could increase that figure.
The number of new affordable housing units in the same period is placed at 904, while the Cambridge Housing Authority placed its waitlist of people looking for affordable homes in the city at more than 22,000.
There were 18,591 persons per each of Cambridge’s 6.4 square miles, or 29 people per acre, as of the census in 2020, or 7,738 households in each (or 12.1 households per acre); and 8,582 housing units in each (or 13.4 housing units per acre). By the MAPC estimates, the population per square mile in 2050 would be 25,563, or 40 people per acre.
Demographics
Comparing two four-year periods of 2005-2009 and 2024-2024, the department found a decline in white, non-hispanic population (to 54 percent from 66 percent) and a rise in the Asian population (to 20 percent from 12 percent). The black population dropped one percentage point between the periods, to 10 percent; Hispanics of any race grew 2 percentage points, to 9 percent.
The Asian populations between the ages of 20 and 29 are higher than any other age group at up to 21 percent, followed by Hispanics between the ages of 20 to 24 at 17 percent; and from 35 to 44 at 16 percent – tied with the 16 percent of whites who are ages 25 to 29.
In the recent four-year period, 70 percent of the population was native-born, down from 74 percent. Foreign-born noncitizens rose to 18 percent from 16 percent; foreign-born, naturalized citizens rose to 11 percent from 9 percent. Among the foreign-born populations, 48 percent are Asian, 20 percent European, 18 percent are Latin American, 9 percent African and 3 percent Canadian.
Wealth
Median household income in 2024 was $130,748 in Cambridge compared with $103,860 in all of Massachusetts and $80,734 in all of the United States.
Looking at share of aggregate income from 2024, the fifth, or top, quintile is the largest: 52 percent of aggregate income goes to households with a mean income of $480,444.
Twenty-three percent of aggregate income among Cambridge households goes to those earning more than $250,000 annually with a mean income of $209,281; 14 percent were in the third quintile earning a mean of $131,997; and another 8 percent in the second quintile earned a mean $74,447. In the lowest quintile, with a mean income of $20,873 and an upper limit of $48,108, were 3 percent of households.
The top 5 percent of earners – those with a mean income of $836,089 – account for 23 percent of the city’s aggregated income.
Poverty
While 13 percent of the total population was below the poverty level in Cambridge, among Black residents that figure was the highest of any demographic group: 29 percent.
“The poverty level in the black-alone category may also be attributed to the lack of generational wealth, attributed to redlining and lack of ability to access the GI bill for housing, which is actually the basis for a lot of generational wealth,” Human Rights Commission co-chair Mercedes Evans said.
Walker agreed. “Yes, it’s a huge issue,” he said, tying it back to changes in population in Cambridge dating back to the 1970s. “Why were white people able to move to new suburban homes? It’s because they were allowed to access the financing.”
“If you were not allowed access to buying a home when people were handing out cheap loans for new, cheap housing, and then that housing appreciated over many years and became the basis of your family wealth,” Walker said, “you are definitely at a big disadvantage.”
This post was updated March 30, 2026, with information about changes in immigration trends resulting from federal policies.
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