Pet Ownership Statistics by City & Household Type

Most pet ownership roundups repeat the same handful of state-level percentages, all tracing back to a single 2019 industry survey. The U.S. Census Bureau asks a more useful question directly: as part of the American Housing Survey (AHS), it asks respondents whether their household has any pets — then cross-tabs the answer against where they live, what kind of home they live in, whether they own or rent, and whether they have kids.

The result is a genuinely independent, government-collected dataset covering 128.5 million occupied U.S. housing units. It doesn't rank all 50 states — and this page explains exactly why below — but it does show, with hard numbers, which of the country's largest metro areas have the highest pet ownership rates, and which household characteristics matter more than geography.

Pet Ownership by Metro Area

Among the 15 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, the Census Bureau's 2021 American Housing Survey found pet ownership rates ranging from a high of 55.0% in Phoenix, AZ down to 28.5% in Miami, FL — a nearly two-fold difference between the most and least pet-owning major metros.

Sun Belt metros with more detached, single-family housing (Phoenix, Riverside, Dallas) cluster at the top, while dense East Coast metros with a larger share of apartment living (New York, Miami, Washington DC) cluster at the bottom — a pattern that lines up with the housing-type breakdown below.

Why Isn't My State Listed?

Most "pet statistics by state" pages online repeat the same 50-state ranking, which traces back to a single 2019 industry survey that has never been re-run at the state level since. We checked directly: the Census Bureau's own American Housing Survey Table Creator, which does publish state-level housing data for 11 states (California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia), does not include a pets variable in any of its 21 topic tables. Pet ownership was only ever asked as a one-time special topic in the 2021 survey, and it was only published down to the metro-area level, not by state. Rather than reprint a six-year-old, unverifiable state list, this page sticks to numbers we can directly trace to a live government source.

Pet Ownership by Housing Type

Housing type is one of the strongest predictors of pet ownership in the Census data. Households living in manufactured or mobile homes have the highest pet ownership rate of any structure type, at 61%. Households in buildings with two or more apartment units have the lowest rate, reflecting both space constraints and, often, landlord pet restrictions.

Homeowners vs. Renters

56% of homeowner households have a pet, compared to 38% of renter households — an 18-point gap, one of the largest differences in the entire dataset. This likely reflects a mix of landlord pet policies and pet deposits/fees, plus the greater space and long-term stability that comes with owning.

Households With Children

57% of households with children under 18 have a pet, compared to 46% of households without children — supporting the common pattern of families adding a pet alongside kids.

Pet Ownership by Age of Householder

Pet ownership rises through early adulthood, peaks in middle age, then declines. Households headed by someone aged 45 to 54 have the highest rate at 58%, compared to 45% for under-25 householders and 40% for those 65 and over.

Pets by Type, Nationwide

Across all 128.5 million occupied U.S. housing units, the Census Bureau counted 49.0 million households with one or more dogs and 28.2 million with one or more cats — independent figures that sit close to APPA's and AVMA's separately measured estimates (see our national pet ownership statistics page). Smaller pet categories included 4.9 million households with fish, and 2.7 million each with birds and small mammals.

How This Differs From "Most Pet-Friendly City" Rankings

Lists like WalletHub's or Forbes Advisor's "most pet-friendly cities" combine dozens of factors — vet costs, walkability, pet businesses per capita, park access — into a single composite score, and often rank smaller cities that never appear in this Census dataset. This page measures one specific, directly reported thing instead: what share of households in a given metro actually have a pet. The two lists answer different questions and shouldn't be read as the same ranking.

The Big Picture

Geography alone doesn't explain who owns pets in America — housing type, homeownership, and household composition matter just as much, if not more, than which metro area someone lives in. The clearest pattern in the Census data isn't a state line; it's the gap between homeowners and renters, and between detached houses and apartment buildings. Any city or state with more of the former will tend to show a higher pet ownership rate almost regardless of region.