Edited this as I’d like it to be less biased: Can anyone direct me towards statistics + evidence that supports/contradicts her stance?
Also adding this link to an Irish times article, although I can’t find the study they’ve cited at the beginning: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/stagnant-wages-and-expensive-housing-leave-young-people-in-ireland-worse-off-than-parents-1.4560760
44 comments
How much income did your house have in the 80s and what percentage of that went on the mortgage for the house?
Maybe she’s right. There are so many variables and points of view to take into account that she might very well be right from her point of view. How do you measure difficulty anyway?
Shes not wrong. Unemployment and inflation were out of control in the 1980s.
Beyond the fact that we were unquestionably *materially* vastly poorer (you had a good chance of living in actual material poverty when it came to food, plumbing, clothing, access to books etc), and evading the fact that I don’t really know how to tackle the independence question, Ireland had an incredibly bleak recession in the 80s.
I remember my great aunts and uncles telling me about it. I don’t know the data to score the points your looking for in your argument (or whether that’s an appropriate goal…) But it was notoriously economically tough and these folks had been around before WW2 so the decline in living standards must have been very striking.
We were known as the sick man of Europe at the time.
It’s very different. Monthly mortgage repayments as a % of income might have been comparable at the time but only because interest rates were astronomically high. Also, unemployment was huge in the 80s.
The current generation are getting fucked in a great many ways, but there’s a victim complex to it which ignores history a lot…
Like most/many 45 year olds who bought in their 20s experienced the devastation of watching the value of their home plummet to a third of their mortgage and many of those simultaneously lost their jobs and experienced insane levels of stress and damage to their mental health, so as much as I believe the market right now if desperate for young people (because of a drastic shortage in supply, largely because we lost almost a decade of construction to the crash, mixed with a lack a high density rentals in our city centres), the folks 20 years older than you had a very shit time of it as well.
Also worth noting my mum went to buy a house on her own, before marrying my dad. Had the deposit from her Dad and a monthly income to pay for it. She was turned away because she was an unmarried woman by the banks.
So yeah, her generation have now benefited through a massive and unwarranted growth in wealth as a result of asset prices growing at a much faster rate than salaries and my parents wealth is a function of the increased leveraging of their children, but they had rough times too and felt like victims in their 20s and 30s too.
She’s right.
In fact, it was far far far worse. Life was grim. I grew up in a family considered financially secure and I only had one pair of shoes until I burst out of them. Everything was falling apart and you wouldn’t dream of heating the whole actual house.
Everyone was in the same boat. It was absolutely awful.
Rent and accommodation costs are higher in relative terms even with higher interest rates. Food and clothing are cheaper. There was more unemployment and taxes were higher a proportion of your take home. There’s more employment now but it’s of a more precarious nature. Rose tinted glasses. Child of the 80s who grew up in a house run on butter vouchers. Things are better now in general but it doesn’t mean it’s still not challenging trying to live independently.
In the 1980s, most families were one salary families.
What if the available evidence shows she is right?
That emigration was a demand release valve?
That mortgage rates of 10% plus meant that only the professional class could hope to achieve a mortgage?
That while the state did at least build houses back then? That again the demand was managed via that drive to emigration?
The comparison of your experience to your Mother’s generation is pretty pointless tbh. You will never understand in how bad it was for many pre 90’s.
Yes many have not been living at home, they could be independent.
But that independence revolved around bedsits barely removed from tenements. Living in a shithole was part and parcel of making ones way in the world.
Those shitholes were facilitated by unregulated rentals and landlords. Private rental housing stock in an awful condition but available on a like it or leave it basis.
That you are asking others to give you the evidence to prove you’re right?
Highlights 2 main possibilities,
1. That you looked and either couldn’t find it or couldn’t understand what you did find?
Or.
2. You are too lazy to look, decided that the hive mind would support your theory and roll in behind you with the evidence you were too lazy to source.
I look forward to reading your Ma’s post.
The 80s were a bad time, tbf
I’d argue it was worse in the 80s
The 80s were a total shit show in Ireland. You could get a house – they had that advantage. Opportunities in work and taxation were way worse then – basically the overwhelming majority had nothing.
Tax is incredibly high today, but it was outrageous back then, interest rates were really high so mortgage repayments were high too.
Basically it’s way better to live in ireland now and it woudo have been way more challenging in the 80s to get ahead
It’s not a competition or anything, but having grown up in the 80’s and remembering the butter vouchers, the canned E.E.C. meat, my aunts and uncles with mortgage interest rates of 10-15%.
I can’t recall any of my friends parents that had a job that wasn’t civil service or a farmer.
People snitching on one another to the dole office for working a day here and there and not declaring it.
People being told that they weren’t entitled to the dole if they could afford to run a car.
I vividly remember my mother being questioned by a dole officer about where she got the money to replace the gas cooker.
Ireland was often referred to as a 3rd world country in Western Europe by the international press.
Is it bad that all the comments about how bad it was in the 80s have given me a sliver of hope? Might have to wait a decade or two but it should get better again, right? Right…!?
It’s an impossible comparison even if you get all the numbers in my opinion. There are too many factors involved in the equation because there has been so much change. What counted as poor then I don’t think exists anymore, though back then people would have been very hesitant to call themselves poor. Relative poverty is a different thing altogether. By default, if you’ve got more people being well off, relative poverty will feel worse to you. Say nobody ever goes on holidays abroad cause that just isn’t a thing anyone can spring for, it’s not going to feel like a big deal if you’re not going. If everyone comes back to school after summer and they’ve been away and you’re the only one who didn’t travel, you’ll feel left out. Another factor is that in the 1980s, you’d have by default compared yourself to other Irish people. These days I think our media landscape is very different, so you might compare to people further afield (and also compare in unrealistic places like instagram). There’s no winning or losing this argument. Both eras were shit for different reasons.
When my parents bought the family house in the 80s they didn’t live in it for almost a year until after they got married, they would spend their wages on wallpaper or paint for a room. All the furniture was hand-me-downs from relatives. They didn’t own a car until I was about 5 years old, even then it was an old blue fiat punto. They saved all the time in the build up to buying the house, so no nights out, no travelling, no luxuries at all.
Now a days couples have the latest smart phones on their pockets, own tablets/laptops/smart watches, likely have 2 cars between them, pay monthly membership/subscription fees to the likes of a gym or Netflix/Prime/Spotify/iTunes/Sky Sports/etc., they will likely eat out and go to pubs with friends (pre covid), they’ll have an annual holiday and maybe weekends away, they’ll have a big flat screen TV with a soundbar and maybe a games console to go with it, they’ll get take aways, spend money on fancy clothes and bags and shoes, and so on…. then when they get a house they would want new everything (beds, couches, dinner tables, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, dryer, nice delph and cutlery) instead of being some 2nd hand bits. I’m not saying people can’t or shouldn’t have all that, it’s their money to spend however they choose, but at the same time there is almost an expectation to have everything they want and then still have a moan that it is so hard to save for a house. People of the 80s cut back to the bare minimum when saving for a house.
Even drinking at home in the 80s people would have been happy with buying cans of Tennants on special and a cheap bottle of bacardi or vodka with a coke, compared to now when people spend silly money on craft beers, overpriced flavoured gins, even the tonic water has to be infused with something or other.
I’m by no means saying every couple is in that boat, but I would assume that most couples have a lot of those things, a very small fee might tick all those boxes. It is no doubt tough to buy a house now but the 80s in Ireland isn’t an easy comparison as people now a days spend so much money on other things compared to back then. My dad always told me to save and spend reasonably within my means of my non saved money. He told me if I really wanted something to wait a month and if I still wanted it then save for it and buy it. This holds true to me now and I think I’ve benefitted massively from it. I see my wife going out and buying a hand bag that she will likely use once a year then compared to me if I’m buying something I almost analyse in my head if I actually NEED it for a start and then if I will use it enough to justify spending money on it.
Anyway, it’s fairly tough to compare the 2. Even looking at % of wages spent on mortgage doesn’t cut it because there are so many more expensive distractions for people to buy now than in the 80s and I personally think the mentality of “want” Vs “need” has shifted massively too.
Ireland in the 80s was like Chernobyl, but with lots of priests.
It’s much easier to live in Ireland today than the 1980’s. The standard of living today is far better.
Well I dont have govt statistics for you but when I sat down to recall, based on your question, I relived a few uncomfortable truths. My parents had to sell the family home, my mother suffered a breakdown, we ate like hamsters. It was all financially driven, my fathers business suffered horribly and these were not frivolous people, it wasnt a prosecco household to start with. It was just a simple bungalow, it wasn’t a mansion, but the mortgage got away from them. I was working, but not making enough to save the house with my contributions. Looking back it was a nightmare that I’ve semi managed to bury. Chilling times.
Having said all that, i largely get by, by not contemplating the difficulties my own 20 somethings will face in the next 4 or 5 years as they attempt to fly the coop. Will cross those bridges as we come to them. Or else be glad they at least have their own bedrooms at home here.
She’s not wrong.
If you were able to put 3 meals a day on the table for your family in the 80’s you were top 10% rich.
Ireland was in a terrible state in the 80s – bleak, depressed, poor. It was basically a given that you would have to emigrate to get a decent job. Ireland today is a vastly superior place to live. Sure, there are still (different) challenges, but there is no comparison.
Source: lived through both.
They’re was a lot of inflation and unemployment in the early 80s and emigration to UK/US/Oz etc but life was more relaxed.
It’s a different kind of shit now with high rents and cost of living and forget about things like homeownership which a lot easier in the 80s
Things are tougher now for young people than they were 5 years ago. Less tough than 40+ years ago.
There is a lot of poor me stuff amongst some though. There was an upvoted post in another thread a few months ago where someone actually said something like “Studies have shown the average teenager now has stress levels comparable to a patient in a mental home 50 years ago”. There’s no hope for someone who actually believes that.
I was talking to my gran the other day about the 70’s.
My grandad was the only income earner once they got married, he had a good job and two thirds of his salary went to the mortgage repayments. That’s proportionally way more than people pay now.
My gran would also frequently not have enough money for a fulls weeks shopping etc.
It seems to me when you actually talk to someone who lived back then it was way worse.
I have very mixed opinions on this, I was born in the 80s and my siblings in the 70s. My dad lost his job so my mother went mushroom picking, the money she made from this and my dads sole was all we had. I remember having beer mats in our shoes to cover the holes. Biscuits were rationed to two a day and that was a shitty rich tea. Sunday we usually ate well as my dad usually won meat on the darts. We mostly likely weren’t the poorest people but we certainly were poor. That said my parents had a council house that was their own and in the 80s they were already buying it rather than just renting it.
I had a child mid 2009 recession, got pregnant before it all went to shit. I remember coming home after being told I was getting a pay cut and a reduction of hours and just sobbing wondering how I would be able to buy her toys. Obviously that was a very materialistic thought but having grown up with nothing that’s where my head went. Well turns out we were fine and able to provide for her. But unlike my parents I am now 37 and still don’t own a house. Those are the major differences for me. My parents have no mortgage in retirement where I may still be renting when I get to retirement age. And as soon as my kids are off to uni they will most likely have to find themselves as I won’t be able to. I think it’s easier to be poor now than it was in the 80s in terms of having credit cards and over draft to cushion you. But given a choice I would pick the 80s as it had a better chance of offering long term security. Also bring a stay at home parent in 2021 is not realistic. I miss my kids and all the work I do seems to be worth bugger all
80’s was worse in material terms but now we have a few generations, my own included, that have never had to go without for the best part and its a deep culture shock not to be able get something we want.
Its completely understandable to be pissed off.
The housing crisis aside, we generally have full bellies, have a smartphone worth a ton in our pockets and clothes on our backs but its the “want” for what previous generations had, ie own a home or even being able to rent without it taking up all of your income, that kills us.
No generation has a monopoly on problems so comparing is pointless. We have it good in some ways and shite in others, just like everyone who went before and those who will come after us.
Still, its pretty shit…
It was way worse. I remember some of my older relatives ate cornflakes with water and some rural relatives had just got an inside toilet. Imagine asking a 20 something year old now to shit in a bucket. Most people here will not even understand proper ‘cold’. Seeing your breath in bed. Most houses barely had heating and you had to run from your weekly bath to the fire. Because any more than 1 bath a week was too expensive.
Ireland was exceptionally poor in the 80s. We are living in absolute luxury compared to then.
I know one thing, not in a million years would I trade places with anyone living in Ireland in the 80s.
Yes, it was easier to buy a house. But pretty much every other aspect of life was significantly worse.
Luxuries are cheaper and essentials are more expensive
I was born in 1969. Going to school I knew I was being educated for export. Neither I nor the vast majority of my classmates had any hope of getting a job in Ireland and we knew it. It was crushing. Not just the poverty, unemployment and emigration but the loss of hope.
It got so bad for so long that it really felt like situation in Ireland was irretrievable and that there was no point in even trying. I remember being in Dublin in the waiting room of an Eastern Health Board Community Welfare Officer, queuing up for hours to try to get rent allowance. It was like being in a zombie movie. All the oul ones were out of it on Valium, all the young ones out of it on smack.
The only other way to cope if you couldn’t hack a lifetime being ‘out of it’ was to literally get ‘ out of it’. ie: take the boat to England or a flight to the US.
My Ma cutting bedsheets in half straight up the middle and sewing the edges together to disguise the worn threadbare patch in the middle. Schoolbooks covered with the waxy paper the sliced pan came wrapped in. Homemade, badly knitted jumpers. EEC intervention beef and cheese, butter vouchers. The St. Vincent De Paul people calling when things got bad. Moneylenders. Pawn shops.
Several years in a row no individual Christmas presents just one ‘family present’. I think it was a Sodastream one year.
I suppose, however, there was at least one upside to things being so bad. I remember years later, during the Celtic tiger, when everyone was back home in Ireland again and busy working every hour they could, a friend saying to me after we had called to two different mates houses only to find they weren’t home.
’God be with the bad oul’ days in the 80’s. At least when you called to see people, they were nearly always in!’
I think the housing situation is the clear stand out in terms of what is worse today than then. I read recently that the cost of housing has increased by 364% since 1991.
However, the 80’s generally was much, much worse in most ways. The scale of poverty is difficult for 90’s kids to understand, I think. We’ve seen a taste of some elements of it in the last financial crash when our emigration numbers spiked for a few years but it was still not as severe as the 80’s. The country was totally and utterly broke. The scale of unemployment was insane. While today you may really struggle desperately for an apartment or a house, you won’t struggle quite so bad for a job. In the 80’s it was the opposite. People left in droves because they just couldn’t improve their lot staying here. People look back with nostalgia but don’t be under any misconceptions, it was miserable. There was a higher rate of child and infant mortality, unaddressed medical conditions of all kinds were rampant, gender inequality was much worse, respect and understanding for queer sexual determinations was non-existent, the quality and diversity of the food was much worse, the cities and towns were in worse repair. The rail network was even worse. The cultural oppression of the Church was still really relevant and powerful and things in Northern Ireland were worse than today. There was little in the way of material reason to stay in Ireland beyond your relationship with loved ones.
I think it was reeling in the years that showed plane loads of Irish men and women in their early twenties leaving every week for the USA. There was no work in Ireland.
My brother was working on the buildings in London at sixteen, no one has to do that now. When people bought or built a house then, it would take years and years to furnish and finish it. If you were living in the country you didn’t get the drive tarmaced for at least ten years. There are different issues obviously today, going to college is a lot more accessible. As someone else stated, lots of younger people have money but there aren’t any houses or apartments available.
A total rethink is needed when it comes to apartment availability and living. Lots of people would have no problem living in a nice apartment with proper facilities, good luck with getting them built especially with planning issues and don’t forget the nimbys.
80s were much worse. All of my relations who came of working age them were forced to emigrate. All my relatives since have not
Its different now because we’re such consumers nowadays and we need so much money just to get through the day and expendable income is far more important which makes getting mortgage more difficult and thats before you take into account the lack of houses for sale.
However we are living more comfortably than people did back then. In the 80s the average family would find it difficult to always put food on the table. Ive heard stories of familys getting a few days out of bone broth and lets not forget butter vouchers.
While most of us in our 30’s have alright paying jobs , an iphone in the pocket , a tv in your bedroom , a car , go out , go traveling (before covid) & generally have a much more comfortable lifestyle than someone in the 80’s were fucked when it comes to owning or renting our own place
Our generation are left in the stupid situation where the bank will say you dont earn enough money to get a mortgage even though we are basically paying off someone else’s mortgage as rent every month(more than a mortgage itself) . Its twice as hard to get on the property ladder now than in the 80’s
[https://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/more-difficult-to-buy-a-home-now-than-in-the-1980s-36321280.html](https://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/more-difficult-to-buy-a-home-now-than-in-the-1980s-36321280.html)
Cant leave out childminding either .In the 80’s most women stayed at home so no childminding costs & family’s could run on one persons income. That would be impossible at present.
[https://www.thejournal.ie/unicef-report-finds-ireland-chilcare-expensive-half-of-salary-spent-5470328-Jun2021/](https://www.thejournal.ie/unicef-report-finds-ireland-chilcare-expensive-half-of-salary-spent-5470328-Jun2021/)
I grew up in donegal in the 80s and i can tell you if anyone thinks living in a town was bleak you should of seen the middle of nowhere,no one had a fuckin penny to their name.
However,houses were definitely easier to afford,if you went about it the right way you buy them for cash, my father went to london for four months and came back to buy our family home,he then went off again and saved the price of doing it up,now it was no palace by modern standards, but all in it cost him ten grand and two years of his life,and there were many doing similar. The caveat is we lived in the middle of nowhere,an hours drive from letterkenny, and we were dirt poor in general,butter vouchers,hand me downs from england, four living in a one bedroom house with no plumbing,only a fire in the sittingroom,frozen all winter, one pair of shoes,if it wasnt for my granny we’d of been hungry many times.
The war was raging too, brits at the checkpoints bombs deaths every single day,it was fucking grim
Your mother is convinced she is right and you’re convinced you are, yet only one of you have lived then and now.
As a child of the 80s, thats not a high bar. Ireland sucked in the 80s. Each decade since the 20s (which was when we last had a famine) were marginally better than the last more or less. Then the 90s and 2000s were a *lot* better. There was a huge change in the country in those two decades that is hard to imagine if you didnt live through it.
The last 15 years the country has gotten worse but your parents are basically correct.
Edit:
I had friends who had to go outside to use the toilet (this was in the city centre). People thought my mother was an amazing cook cause she didnt serve pasta from a can. We couldnt afford a tv, let alone a car, so we rented our single tv screen and some months went without. There were some years I had to wear last years clothes until I literally burst out of them. I never felt especially poor compared to my peers.
Housing is at least as big a problem now but we have much easier now in a lot of ways.
The 80s was a nightmare mate. I would say that your mother saying it’s similar to now is being soft on ya, tbh.
Your mother is incorrect, it was vastly more difficult back then.
I would hazard a guess that things like food and motoring were expensive. But not housing
Ireland in the 1980s was the Bulgaria or Romania of the EU today. Our living standards were in no way comparable to what we had in the depths of the financial crash let alone today. Yes there’s problems and they cannot be excused by “it was worse before”… but we’re not drying teabags and pissing in pots or drying our socks when we get to school. All things I remember.
Some random 80s recollections:
Dad had a good paying job, neighbours were bankers and business owners. Good house in a good area. Still woke to frost inside the windows in the coldest snaps. No radiators in the house. We had a back boiler only, so we got hot water from the fire into the tank upstairs, the house was built without central heating.
I collected glass bottles to get into the cinema on the refund value.
No house phone cos that cost money.
A bank loan we got was 13% interest.
Often took 3-4 hours to do the Dublin-Waterford run, bus or car. Had to pass through every hamlet, village and town along the way with all that entailed. Best of luck on the coast road.
Lads smoking weed and drinking flagons in the labour exchange (dole office).
Friends and neighbours emigrating en masses to the UK.
Customer service was non existent.
Rain.
Some great music.
Industry closing down left and right.
People finally getting browned off enough with the church to start doing something about it.
The devil’s in the details. I’m sure more will come back to me.
I remember pasta coming to Ireland for the first time and being available in shops.
Fruit and veg was seasonal. You got oranges during summer only. Mandarins were an absolute treat. Actually that’s a massive one. Stuff you take for granted now was impossible to source out of season back then.
Pineapples were available about 1 month of the year.
Every one I knew grew veg.