A smaller share of U.S. households owns a home than any time since 1967, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

The homeownership rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 63.4 percent in the second quarter of 2015, the bureau said. That rate was 1.3 percentage points below where it was at the same time last year.

Homeownership has been declining in the U.S. in the wake of the housing bubble's collapse and amid shifting demographics.

The homeownership rate peaked at 69.4 percent near the height of the subprime mortgage bubble in 2004.

Since then, it has fallen steadily, to below the rates of the pre-bubble years of the 1990s.

Homeownership fell among all age groups, according to the agency.

Rates also have declined in all regions, and among all ethnic groups and income levels.

The federal government has taken action meant to arrest the decline of homeownership throughout the recession, including large-scale purchases of mortgage-backed securities by the Federal Reserve to lower mortgage rates and efforts by regulators to ease terms of credit.

At the same time, new rules on home loans and banks implemented for investor and consumer safety in response to the crisis have tightened access to credit in some cases.

Throughout the recession, first-time home-buying has lagged, as young people face poor job prospects and relatively high levels of personal debt.

While the second-quarter homeownership rate was the lowest in more than four decades, it wasn't significantly different from some of the rates of the 1990s and 1980s, when the rate dipped as low as 63.8 percent and 63.5 percent, respectively.