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Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

bloomberg.com

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Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#21

Post by conistonwater »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

It's a convenient shorthand for talking about and summarizing continuous statistical distributions. Shorthands are okay. As to your question, if you draw the lines between differently, you only get slightly different results, because it's fundamentally measuring the dependence of various factors on age, and the exact way you draw those lines isn't important.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#22

Post by enraged_camel »

It's good to see a study that quantifies what we have suspected for a while now: millennials aren't doing as well as their parents were at any given age. This is why certain "life thresholds" such as getting married or buying a house are delayed, sometimes significantly.

The annoying thing is that this is typically blamed on imaginary negative traits that millennials possess, such as laziness or spite borne out of feelings of entitlement. Whereas the fact is that Boomers had it really, really good, having grown up during an age of unprecedented growth, especially in contrast to the rest of the developed world, which was recovering from World War 2. That's the main reason they have done so well economically: America's rising tide has lifted all their boats. Unfortunately, this has come at the expense of subsequent generations, who now have to live with, and pay, their debt.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#23

Post by beaconstudios »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

I think it's based on the trope that teenagers rebel against their parents' beliefs, mixed with the idea of generational progress. So each generation of teenagers rebels against their parents' ideas that they believe are "outdated", and then supposedly grow up retaining this new framework of belief. So what was cool becomes uncool, what was progressive becomes conservative, etc etc.

I think it's mostly nonsense though. I think the underlying grouping that generation is a proxy for, is age group. 18-25 year olds behave differently from 25-35 or 35-50 (with some fuzziness at the edges). In other words it's loose grouping based on age/maturity.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#24

Post by jcadam »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

I was born in 1980, which means I don't fit neatly into either 'Gen X' or 'Millennial.' I grew up with computers, but I'm able to walk down the street and watch where I'm going rather than stare at my smartphone whilst walking into other people, lampposts, cars, etc.

But really, it's all arbitrary and pointless, I agree.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#25

Post by brixon »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #12

Average expenditure at 30: $45,000 That's strange to me - is everyone living on debt? Factor in median household income for a fam with Bachelors degrees: $68,728 , which is $52,000ish net of tax. How are people spending that much? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

That may be the spending on education. That is mostly debt.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#26

Post by esotericn »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #12

Average expenditure at 30: $45,000 That's strange to me - is everyone living on debt? Factor in median household income for a fam with Bachelors degrees: $68,728 , which is $52,000ish net of tax. How are people spending that much? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

The majority of individuals and households spend all of their money. That's the 'how'.

The more salient question is 'why'.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#27

Post by logosmonkey »

burlesona wrote: post #2

From the article: “What’s old is new again. The paper observes that some of the millennials’ parents were subject to similar baseless grumbles of "kids these days" from their elders.” I don’t know though. Seems like part of the nastiness of the times is the baby boomers constantly taking jabs at millennials. Perhaps the silent generation complained the boomers weren’t “frugal enough” but I have a hard time believing…

I think that, like most stats now, it's inflated by the bullhorn of the internet.

Basically it probably happened but the world at large didn't have the ability to hear about it. Sort of like crime rates, even though they are lower than nearly any other time in the US the fact that the internet and 24 hour news cycle constantly talk about crimes the population as a whole feels its a bigger problem than it used to be.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#28

Post by enraged_camel »

esotericn wrote: post #16

I think the term "poorer", and the monetary analysis done here, is too high level to extract real meaning. The average young person/couple that I know are able to do and buy far more than their parents (e.g. eat out, order takeaway, take holidays, go to bars, buy things for hobbies, buy clothes, ...). They just don't own property and have no path that leads there. In some sense you could say that they have higher inc…

What you are talking about is having higher quality of life, despite having lower wealth.

But that's a separate subject in my opinion.

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#29

Post by gondo »

iagooar wrote: post #6

It's funny how this "generation" thing only quite exists (as far as I know) in the English-speaking world. There is no such idea of generations of people where I come from. It's hard for me to even grasp the idea of it. Who draws a line between generations and why? People do not stop being born, nor do they magically change because they supposedly belong to an imaginary generation. Am I missing something?

this was a great video about this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ

Re: Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents, Only Poorer

#30

Post by blakesterz »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #3
burlesona wrote: post #2

From the article: “What’s old is new again. The paper observes that some of the millennials’ parents were subject to similar baseless grumbles of "kids these days" from their elders.” I don’t know though. Seems like part of the nastiness of the times is the baby boomers constantly taking jabs at millennials. Perhaps the silent generation complained the boomers weren’t “frugal enough” but I have a hard time believing…

I don't think that was any less in previous generations. I seem to recall hearing about a lot of grumbling about people protesting the Vietnam war, for example.

This sort of covers that:

"Older people love to gripe about the entitled, lazy millennial generation. But it's nothing new – by delving into the archives, we found plenty of parallels stretching back 2,000 years."

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20171003-proof-that-people-...

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