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Has Income Growth between Generations of Americans Stalled?
CATO
2024.09.13
Adefining aspect of the American dream is that the economic well-being of each generation surpasses that of the previous one. However, commentators have questioned whether this holds true for the most recent generations. A 2022 Gallup poll found that only 42 percent of Americans expect today’s young people to have a better life than their parents―down from 71 percent in 1999. Similarly, headlines in recent years have called millennials the unluckiest generation and labeled them worse off than their parents. Yet millennial and Generation Z adults were nearly as likely as baby boomers to report doing financially better than their parents at the same age, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. Hence, young adults appear to be more positive about their own financial progress than popular commentary suggests.
Our research examines this question by evaluating whether each generation’s income has surpassed that of the previous one. We focused on five generations―the Greatest Generation (born 1901?1927), the silent generation (1928?1945), baby boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965?1980), and millennials (1981?1996)―using the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. For each generation at each age, we estimated the distribution of a broad measure of income that accounts for tax liabilities, transfers in cash, and in-kind transfers. Previous research has demonstrated the importance of assessing economic well-being using a broad measure of income. Additionally, our 60 years of data (1963?2022) allow for a longer period of analysis than most previous studies on intergenerational mobility.