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Roula Khalaf, editor-in-chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The idea behind the concept of generations is that people born at a certain time share similar experiences, which in turn shape common attitudes.
The “bigger” and “silent” generations, born in the first decades of the 20th century, witnessed economic adversity and global conflict, which continued to shape left-wing views. Baby boomers grew up accustomed to growth and prosperity, and continued to lean strongly conservative.
It was a similar story for millennials, who entered adulthood in the wake of the global financial crisis to be greeted by high unemployment, anemic income growth, and Hot Air Balloon Home Price Ratioscontinue to defend strongly progressive politics.
Much analysis and discourse treats millennials and Gen Z as close cousins, united in their struggle to achieve the prosperity of previous generations. But the validity of this elision depends a lot on where you look.
Millennials across the Western world were truly united in their economic malaise. From the United States and Canada to Britain and Western Europe, the cohort born in the mid-to-late 1980s experienced their formative adult years against a backdrop of low or stagnant wage growth and rates of property cratering.
Absolute upward mobility – the extent to which members of a generation earn more than their parents’ generation at the same age – has fallen steadily. In the United States, by the time someone born in 1985 had 30 60% made by those born in the 1950s.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the story of millennial malaise is not a myth. They may be the most economically unlucky generation of the last century.
But then we hit a fork in the road. For young adults in Britain and most of Western Europe, conditions have only gotten worse since then. If you thought the sub-1% annual growth in living standards endured by millennials was bad, try sub-zero. Britons born in the mid-1990s saw living standards not only stagnate but decline. Just across Europe, there is precious little for younger adults.
But in America, Generation Z is driving ahead. American living standards have increased by an average of 2.5% per year since the cohort born in the late 1990s entered adulthood, benefiting this generation not only with much more upward mobility than their elders of Generation Y, but with a faster improvement in living standards than the young baby boomers had at the same age. And it’s not just income: Gen Z Americans are also outpacing millennials in their climb onto the housing ladder.
All signs are that in the United States, the decades-long slowdown in economic progress from generation to generation has not only stopped but been reversed. Americans born in 1995 enjoy even more upward mobility relative to their parents than those born in 1965. Zoomers by name, Zoomers by socio-economic nature.
The shift in the economic trajectories of young Americans and the divergence from their European counterparts poses interesting questions.
From a sociological perspective, in an era of borderless social media narratives and algorithms that reward negativityCan the meme of young adult adversity survive contact with the reality of America’s Generation Z? And with a flood of negative social comparisons just a smartphone away, how will the growing awareness that young Americans are on a higher trajectory affect young Europeans?
Turning to politics, will America’s youngest cohort of voters take their own path? The fact that it was not only younger people, but also young women who swung behind Donald Trump in the US elections suggests that this could already be happening. A group that sees itself as among life’s winners may not develop the same instinct for social solidarity that its oppressed predecessors held.
At a time of “vibration changes“, The pivot from a sense of downward mobility to one of growing prosperity could prove the greatest yet. A divergence in the music of the mood on either side of the Atlantic will surely inject new urgency into Europe’s search for its own increase.
Any way you look at it, restarting the economic treadmill in America could prove to be an extremely important moment.
