[OC] Traditional life milestones are happening later and later, due to high cost of living and greater education

Posted by Little-Ball3409

31 comments

  2. Conflating all three milestones makes little sense, it would make more sense as three separate graphs to see how they correlate instead of just being the last of the three.

  3. I wish they did more of a breakdown on accomplishing each of the three milestones. Because if you consider all 3, the biggest reason of waiting is that women have less of a social expectation to settle down, get married, and have kids so less women do it and the women that do tend to do it later in life.

  4. I’m pretty surprised that it’s less than 50% for 40 year old Gen X

  5. Another factor is that those things aren’t as important anymore. I don’t need to be married to be considered an adult. I’m in my 40s and will never get married or have kids. But i own my house, have a rewarding career, fulfilling hobbies, retirement savings, etc.

  6. The term milestone implies that those three things are something everyone should strive for. Except for moving out, I don’t believe this is necessarily the case. For me, marrying and having kids is not really a priority to say the least.

    You could argue that having kids is somewhat important for our society to function, but that should not really be the main motivation for having a child.

  7. >Due to high cost of living and education

    The situation is not nearly so simple. There are many, many more factors at play. Birth rates, for example, are falling across all educational and income groups, and even in countries with rising real incomes and very generous pro-family policies and strong social safety nets.

  8. How can the traces have negative slope? Do people who accomplish things have higher mortality? Or is marriage a condition rather than an event?

    If the latter, then it’s not really an accomplishment that you’re measuring. Do you lose the accomplishment of having a child if it dies? If your parents move in with you so that you can take care of them, then do you lose the accomplishment of having moved out?

  9. Hey whys there that big bump in silent generation stuff at the age of 22.

    Why would 22 year olds be so upwardly mobile?

    Was it scary government socialist programs like the GI bill!?!?!

    Surely not.

  11. A middle class home that was once affordable on a single income from a job that required a high school diploma by a worker in their early 20s isn’t obtainable in pretty much all of the country now. It takes two incomes, and two educated incomes, where years are spent on professional development with ‘good jobs’ to afford a housing situation that people would call middle class now in much of the country.

    In the 1950s, housing was cheap. Men in their early 20s could get jobs that allowed them to afford a home and stay at home wife. The house would be good enough to have a bunch of kids. Having kids is something people want to do, you have to make it really hard and force them into a situation where they can barely afford it for them to NOT have kids. People say “Well kids get in the way of having a career!”… the whole point of the career was to afford the family. The reason why a ‘good job’ was a status symbol was because it made someone sufficient for raising a family.

    There are plenty of people who I know who wanted to have kids, but were not going to make it work with the housing situation. They are now in their late 30s and early 40s, with no kids, and they are pissed. THe career at the end of the day is just a job for the vast majority of people. The prospects for Millennials were absolutely gutted with the GFC in 2007-2008.

  12. That silent generation whooping everybody’s arse.

  13. Ha. I will never marry and I will never have children. At 32 years old, and with nothing but a lot of student debt, marriage and children are off the table. Plus, I am way too tired at this point.

    Fact is, the standard of living in this country has declined significantly. And moreover, culturally, we’re toasted. This isn’t merely economic.

  14. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one experiencing “delayed adulthood” as my friend calls it.

  15. I’m Gen X and I have one child. My Millennial neighbors want zero and most of the Gen Z people I know also want zero (but on the other hand my own daughter says she’s open to it).

  16. A lot of people just don’t aspire to get married or have kids anymore. I’m a millennial and probably half my friends, including me, don’t want kids.

  17. I mean, I’m just about to pass that line but I got laid off. So shit’s only getting worse, quick

  18. Also major wage stagnation for decades; even though profits are now at an all time high and there’s more wealth flowing around than ever before, it’s never reaching the working class. That income loss along with absurd housing rates and the inflation/ price gouging of essential goods, it’s hard to see 50% of zoomers moving out until 40s.

  19. I can’t follow this without the milestones called out I don’t think. Where do I look to see that?

  21. I’m 32 and have never had a relationship. 20% seems right.

  22. There is an assumption in that they are still like goals generations aspire to achieve.

    Esp having kids, the view of Gen Z about bringing a human into the world, this world, are very different to others and not just about dollars!

  23. This is some absolutely bottom of the barrel content honestly. What evidence do you have to support this is high cost of living? Those graphs are plateauing at different times, not just offsetting, is one of the three “life milestones” playing a bigger part in all this I wonder? And honestly did you make this in excel? No? Then why are the colours so similar?!

    0/10 post. This data is neither clear, nor beautiful and you are mis-using it to impose your ideals on reddit. Come back with some real insights next time.

  24. Marrying and having children aren’t ‘milestones’ – not everyone does it and not everyone wants to. Even moving out isn’t a thing that *everyone* does (though this is much more common).

    The interpretation here isn’t necessarily one of the same things happening later in life, but instead *different things are happening to younger generations.* Or do you really think people would be marrying earlier and having children earlier if they just had more money/were a bit more stupid?

  26. Its funny cause gen z is super right wing, as in the ones making them so bad off they support the most

  27. Doesn’t increasing life expectancy play a significant part in delaying milestones?

    Average life expectancy in North America went from about 65 years in 1950 to +80 years currently

  28. I mean, also we are living longer so we can take more time. Why have kids early when you can enjoy being a YOPRO for a bit?

  29. I’m curious to see how much this would shift or not if we also added in “buying a house”

  30. Add “Visiting Another Country while not currently serving in the military” and previous generations won’t seem so developed.

  31. I’m Gen-X, funny I’m not even on the graph. I had all this done at 16…

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