5 ms·

Millennials Control Just 4.6 Percent of US Wealth

40 points by adham01 5y ago

yuliyp 5y ago
This feels really obvious to me. Of course people just starting their adult lives wouldn't have had a chance to build up much savings / acquired an inheritance. Naturally they'll buy a house and start building equity in it before investing a huge amount into the stock market. As they get older, retirement accounts and home equity will grow, leading to older people having more wealth. An intereting analysis would be to look at what this looked like for different generations adjusting for age (what did savings for baby boomers look like when they were in their 30s?).
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Millennials are turning 40 this year.
  - cronix 5y ago
    The first ones are, if you go by the popular definition of those born between 1981 and 1996. Others are turning 25 and most somewhere in between. There's a 15 year difference between the start and end of the "generation." > Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials
- triceratops 5y ago
  > people just starting their adult lives "Millennials" were born between 1984 and 1991. A good portion of them are well into adulthood.
- content_sesh 5y ago
  In 1989, those under 40 had 13.1% of total household wealth. In Q1 2021 that number was 6.0%. It seems 2009-2011 saw the lowest levels where it didn't crack 5% https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:shares https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
  - pmcjones 5y ago
    Is that normalized by the number of people under 40 in 1989 versus the number of people under 40 in 2021? There are a lot of baby boomers (first group).
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      More: Is it normalized by change in life expectancy? If you were under 40 in 1989, what was the probability that your parents had died and left you the money? What is the probability in 2021?
handrous 5y ago
This reads as machine-translated, if not machine-generated. Individual paragraphs contain errors and awkwardness that looks like bad translation, while the overall structure seems meandering, like a not-great machine-generated piece. What's up with this source? (the actual content matches what I've read elsewhere for years now, re: declining same-age proportion of national wealth with each post-Boomer generation, but the presentation, oof)
- Abrownn 5y ago
  It is/was. The OP is a serial content thief and was flagged just the other day for it again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 - theyve been stealing/rehosting content for years on various blog sites and mass-spamming reddit with clickbait articles like this.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
This looks pretty natural, and inheritance has a lot to do with it. Boomers are still alive, and therefore controlling their wealth. When they pass, any inheritance would usually go to their children, who would be generation X(or millennials to a lesser degree), and so on and so forth.
- cyral 5y ago
  When you compare the % share of wealth across generations when they were the same age, millennials are on track to own significantly less: https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1198703644721524744 https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1198703644721524744
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    To own significantly less, or to own a smaller proportion of the whole?
Zanni 5y ago
There are far more Boomers than Millenials. Of course Boomers are going to have a larger "share" of U.S. wealth (compounded by the fact that Boomers are at the ends of their careers, in their highest-earning phase). Here's an article [0] that looks at wealth per capita by age (and inflation adjusted), rather than by share. It shows that Gen X is doing much better than the Boomers (which matches my experience--my siblings and I far out-earn our parents), and that Millenials are on track to do the same but just aren't as far along the curve yet. [0] https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2021/09/01/who-is-the-wealthiest-generation/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2021/09/01/who-is-the-w...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- beeboop 5y ago
  I feel like inflation does a really bad job at adjusting for everyone's major expense: housing. It feels like gaslighting every time someone tries to tell me how fine millennials are when we objectively don't have the same opportunities for easy effortless well paying employment that makes buying a house a very achievable goal relatively early in life. Of course these are just my feelings and I don't have data to support it
  - cafard 5y ago
    "when we objectively don't have the same opportunities for easy effortless well paying employment that makes buying a house a very achievable goal relatively early in life." I'm not sure where you got your picture of the 1970s and 1980s. "Easy effortless well paying employment" is not how most of my cohort would have described our jobs, particularly the "well paying" part. I'm not sure what relatively early in life is: before 30? before 35?
- ariwilson 5y ago
  there are more millenials than boomers: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_living_adult_generations.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_living_adult_gene...
- 5y ago
kaminar 5y ago
It's a blessing...a majority would destroy what they get, or use it to hurt this country.

40 points by adham01 5y ago

This feels really obvious to me. Of course people just starting their adult lives wouldn't have had a chance to build up much savings / acquired an inheritance. Naturally they'll buy a house and start building equity in it before investing a huge amount into the stock market. As they get older, retirement accounts and home equity will grow, leading to older people having more wealth. An intereting analysis would be to look at what this looked like for different generations adjusting for age (what did savings for baby boomers look like when they were in their 30s?).

dogma1138 5y ago
Millennials are turning 40 this year.
- cronix 5y ago
  The first ones are, if you go by the popular definition of those born between 1981 and 1996. Others are turning 25 and most somewhere in between. There's a 15 year difference between the start and end of the "generation." > Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials
triceratops 5y ago
> people just starting their adult lives "Millennials" were born between 1984 and 1991. A good portion of them are well into adulthood.
content_sesh 5y ago
In 1989, those under 40 had 13.1% of total household wealth. In Q1 2021 that number was 6.0%. It seems 2009-2011 saw the lowest levels where it didn't crack 5% https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:119;series:Net%20worth;demographic:age;population:all;units:shares https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
- pmcjones 5y ago
  Is that normalized by the number of people under 40 in 1989 versus the number of people under 40 in 2021? There are a lot of baby boomers (first group).
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    More: Is it normalized by change in life expectancy? If you were under 40 in 1989, what was the probability that your parents had died and left you the money? What is the probability in 2021?

handrous 5y ago

This reads as machine-translated, if not machine-generated. Individual paragraphs contain errors and awkwardness that looks like bad translation, while the overall structure seems meandering, like a not-great machine-generated piece. What's up with this source? (the actual content matches what I've read elsewhere for years now, re: declining same-age proportion of national wealth with each post-Boomer generation, but the presentation, oof)

Abrownn 5y ago
It is/was. The OP is a serial content thief and was flagged just the other day for it again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 - theyve been stealing/rehosting content for years on various blog sites and mass-spamming reddit with clickbait articles like this.

clipradiowallet 5y ago

This looks pretty natural, and inheritance has a lot to do with it. Boomers are still alive, and therefore controlling their wealth. When they pass, any inheritance would usually go to their children, who would be generation X(or millennials to a lesser degree), and so on and so forth.

cyral 5y ago
When you compare the % share of wealth across generations when they were the same age, millennials are on track to own significantly less: https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1198703644721524744 https://twitter.com/graykimbrough/status/1198703644721524744
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  To own significantly less, or to own a smaller proportion of the whole?

Zanni 5y ago

There are far more Boomers than Millenials. Of course Boomers are going to have a larger "share" of U.S. wealth (compounded by the fact that Boomers are at the ends of their careers, in their highest-earning phase). Here's an article [0] that looks at wealth per capita by age (and inflation adjusted), rather than by share. It shows that Gen X is doing much better than the Boomers (which matches my experience--my siblings and I far out-earn our parents), and that Millenials are on track to do the same but just aren't as far along the curve yet. [0] https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2021/09/01/who-is-the-wealthiest-generation/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2021/09/01/who-is-the-w...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beeboop 5y ago
I feel like inflation does a really bad job at adjusting for everyone's major expense: housing. It feels like gaslighting every time someone tries to tell me how fine millennials are when we objectively don't have the same opportunities for easy effortless well paying employment that makes buying a house a very achievable goal relatively early in life. Of course these are just my feelings and I don't have data to support it
- cafard 5y ago
  "when we objectively don't have the same opportunities for easy effortless well paying employment that makes buying a house a very achievable goal relatively early in life." I'm not sure where you got your picture of the 1970s and 1980s. "Easy effortless well paying employment" is not how most of my cohort would have described our jobs, particularly the "well paying" part. I'm not sure what relatively early in life is: before 30? before 35?
ariwilson 5y ago
there are more millenials than boomers: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_living_adult_generations.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_living_adult_gene...
5y ago

kaminar 5y ago

It's a blessing...a majority would destroy what they get, or use it to hurt this country.