Today, they are Americans under 18 years of age growing up in a country where the majority of their peers live in households that take "means-tested assistance" from the government.
In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them ‐ or 52.1 percent ‐ resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.
These included the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.
The Census Bureau published its data on the number and percentage of persons living in households that received means-tested government assistance in its Current Population Survey Detailed Tables for Poverty.
Table POV-26 indicates there were approximately 319,911,000 people in the United States in 2016. Of these, 114,793,000 ‐ 35.9 percent ‐ lived "in a household that received means-tested assistance."
That does not mean every person in the household received the aid themselves, only that one or more persons living in the household did.