The chart compares each generation at the same median ages to draw comparisons.
Few things capture the precariousness of life for today's young adults like a visualization of their wealth. Economist Gray Kimbrough did just that, using Federal Reserve data to compare how generations fared financially at different points of their life cycles. Wealth is a measure of what people own: their assets (which typically include homes, cash savings and stocks) minus their debts (like mortgages, student loans, consumer debt). Its importance to an individual, a nation or an entire generation cannot be overstated; it gives families a safety net during hard economic times, such as a layoff, and is intertwined with such milestones of adult life as buying a home, starting a business or retiring comfortably.
One important caveat to the chart above is that the three generations aren't the same size, population-wise. In 1990, for instance, boomers accounted for 31 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2008, GenXers were only 22 percent of the population. So we can say that in 1990, boomers owned 21 percent of the nation's wealth and represented 31 percent of the population, for a wealth-to-population ratio of 0.68 — each percentage point of the total U.S. population represented by boomers, in other words, owned 0.68 percent of the wealth. In 2008, on the other hand, Gen Xers owned 9 percent of the wealth and made up 22 percent of the population, for a wealth-to-population ratio of 0.41. That's a smaller generational deficit than the raw numbers suggest, but it's still a significant one. It illustrates the size of the financial hole today's young adults are in relative to their parents. It's a hole they'll never truly be able to dig out of, given the way that money draws other money to itself via the gravitational pull of compound interest: The less money you start out with, the less you'll make during the rest of your life.
We Millennials are pretty far behind, and not so likely to catch up.
And on the measure itself:
Gray 'serial millennial myth debunker' Kimbrough
@graykimbrough
Replying to
@ewrigleyfield
Indeed, it's a weird measure! It doesn't show the mean or median net worth for each generation member, because the Fed doesn't supply that. However, to the extent that aggregate wealth tracks certain types of power in our society, this definitely has meaning for generations.
4:45 PM · Nov 24, 2019·Twitter for Android
@graykimbrough
Replying to
@ewrigleyfield
Indeed, it's a weird measure! It doesn't show the mean or median net worth for each generation member, because the Fed doesn't supply that. However, to the extent that aggregate wealth tracks certain types of power in our society, this definitely has meaning for generations.
4:45 PM · Nov 24, 2019·Twitter for Android