Forget boomers vs millennials, inequality between millennials is much more concerning. A graph from FT showing wealth inequality across the two generations over time.

Posted by lollipoppizza

31 comments

  1. FWIW, this is among millennials and boomers in the UK

  4. Since this is “housing wealth” isn’t the difference between millennials just about whether they own a home or not? Like yes the average millennial is renting and that is its own issue. But isn’t there a better way to measure the wealth gap between peers?

  5. When those millennials inherit from their boomer parents this would actually get worse. 

  6. This is why comparing averages among generations obscures much of the story

  8. The real problem has always been wealth inequality, regardless of any other aspect of identity. Other things can be handy proxies for wealth inequality, but are far more often used to drive wedges between those who should be united against the true authors of their suffering, the rich.

  9. What is housing wealth? The net worth of your house after you subtract your mortgage?

  11. That’s a pretty bad chart on several levels. First, it conflates median and average. It appears to actually be median, that explains why it’s basically zero – less than half of millennials own a house. Second, it’s kind of weird to compare only housing wealth. One of the trends that has been discussed in the press is that people finally realize that housing is not the only way to earn money from your investments. Many people invest in stocks and bonds instead, which offers a bunch of advantages over housing but that’s another conversation. It’s just not a good way to compare generations.

  12. We’re living in a new gilded age where inequality is worse than ever. If politicians continue to ignore the problem, eventually we will feed them their cake.

  13. B-but they told us to point fingers at each other while they are getting filthy rich.

  14. Okay, but how does this compare to overall wealth inequality? Because that’s going up for everyone, so I would bet that you could graph every generation and it would look like this. So my big question is – is wealth inequality among millennials *worse* than average wealth inequality? Because, to me, that would actually indicate a specific generational problem. Otherwise, this is just a graph that shows what’s happening to everyone.

  15. I’m an elder millennial and this feels right.

    I own my home, just bought a truck and camper, and have a great job.

    My sister is 12 years younger and she end up back with my parents every so often and struggles to pay rent

  16. Forget one generation vs another. We are in a vs war with the extreme wealth and we are losing. They want us to fight for scraps while they take almost all of the resources.

    Stop fighting among yourselves and focus on the uber rich.

  17. Wait. Wtf. I’m 42. Am I am Boomer now? Aren’t there like two other generations between Boomers and Millennials? I feel like my age group keeps getting tossed around in what label we are, but I’ve never heard Boomer.

  19. I mean, I do think inequality is at the root of a lot of this, but your graph shows the average millennial’s net “housing wealth” being like $0 at 38 years old, so you’re not really making the point you want to.

  20. Think you found the wrong sub for this one a chart (and post) titled around “Wealth Inequality”.. that only actually presents wealth from a single asset class (real estate).. is definitely not “beautiful”

  21. This tracks. I consider myself lucky that I managed to get a mortgage right before covid.

    So I’m playing less monthly than a renter, and my property doubled in value $200k to $400K. And about $1400 less than a equilvent rental property in mortage payment/ulitity/insurance.

    I was very close to not being able to get the mortgage and this would’ve put me in the average millennial zone.

    So I think the 10% are those that managed to get a property pre-covid

  22. This might be the worst data is beautiful post I’ve seen. They take a real issue with real data and completely fuglify it with this unreadable graph that actually also obfuscates the original point and story told by the data 

  24. If you eliminate like 5 of the wealthiest millennials, I bet that graph looks waaaay different 

  25. Of course the top have more than their parents… they inherited mom’s dad’s house.

  27. Without reading the article you likely misunderstanding the plot given that theres strong evidence to support relying on parental support being a key differentiator for millennial so this doesnt show what you think it does. It shows millennial who can rely on boomer financial contributions and those that cannot. So this still remains millennials vs boomers

  28. tl;dr – Intergenerational weath stratification based on class inheritence.

  29. Rich peoples kids are even richer, while poor people’s kids are even poorer.

  30. Thats skewed by Mark Zuckerberg. He owns a not insignificant percentage of all millennial wealth.

  31. So it would seem that the problem is not agree or generation, but ability?

Comments are closed.