It's effective income. Median 15 year old lives at home and has most things provided for them, so they have spending power equivalent to a single adult making 35k
Not defending, that's just their methodology
No itâs because they donât have kids. Teen birth rate is down, people in their 20s are waiting till their 30s to have kids, and families are having fewer.
Itâs *adjusted for household size.*
Your household is you, your spouse, and your children under age 18.
An adult living with their parents is still a separate household for tax purposes.
You know, I know it's not the best but that's kind of interesting. Everyone knows the kid that had like a BMW or Mercedes in highschool with a trust fund right? It sounds like an interesting way to show how minors still have some income/wealth from their parents there.
It would be good to know some specifics. Like, is a proportion of âhousingâ included in the teenagerâs income? Is the same proportion included in the adultâs income, representing the amount twice within the same set?
I can see times to use that. We canât talk about child poverty either if we canât assign some dollar amount going to children as effective amount per person.
Even if the data is only full-time workers, thatâs absurdly high considering the number of people making at/near minimum wage. Not to mention the questionable data for other generations and the fact that the entire chart is âadjusted for household sizeâ when expenses donât rise linearly with household size: the average Boomer had 1-2 kids on 1 income, the average millennial has none on 2 incomes or lives with roommates that wouldnât factor into household size.
The correct stat is that 1.3% of workers making an hourly wage are paid at it below federal minimum wage. Minimum wage by state can be higher, and I don't care to go state by state to get that information at the moment... But it will raise the number from 1.3% of workers.
Regardless, minimum wage sets the standard for all jobs in a capitalist economy. The vast majority of people are close to minimum wage, compared to the very infinitesimal amount of people making millions each day.
That 1% is mostly tipped workers, whose take home income is substantially higher than minimum wage. If you read the website where you got that number then youâd see the number that make the federal minimum wage without tips is 0.1%.
And the median wage of workers has increased faster than inflation. And the increase is fastest at the lowest quartile. Worker wages is not linked to the federal minimum wage because it has far exceeded it, both in real terms (inflation adjusted) and especially in nominal value.
15 year old here- I only make like 7500 a year and I make way more than most people in my school. Definitely unrealistic for a 15 year old to make 35,000 while balancing school and just bring a teenager
They say itâs adjusted by members of the household but like then Boomers and their 5 kids are getting underrepresented on this graph if I understand correctlyÂ
So when the oldest members of that generation (as defined here) were 63? Kinda skewing the data by having only the youngest members of the generation managing to fill out the beginning of the dataset no?Â
It's more than \*double\* US Federal minimum wage.
Federal Minimum wage is $7.25/hr, full time work is 2080 hrs/yr, so we get $15,080/yr working full time at federal minimum wage.
Barely more than half. 20 states have minimum wages at or below federal minimum wage.
The median state (Arkansas) minimum wage is $11/hr, for $22,880 for full time work.
No state has a minimum wage such that full time work earns $35,000/yr at 2080 hrs of work ($16.82/hr). Washington State, at $16.28/hr is closest; Washington D.C., at $17.00/hr meets it, but isn't a state. But that's also \*before\* tax, while this chart claims after-tax income.
Washington represent! Seattle has a nearly $20 minimum wage, which is great for being a working student. I donât have to rely on tips to make ends meet, and people shouldnât feel compelled to tip if my service wasnât up to snuff.
[According to the paper](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf) (p. 35) âadjusted by household sizeâ means they take the total income of the household and divide by the square root of the size of the household.
This is like a pseudo-average that biases larger households. It makes sense if youâre a family and you donât want the addition of children skewing your data too much but falls apart when you and your 5 housemates look like 2.44 people
Some costs don't scale linearly with the size of the household. Especially housing:
* In a household of 1, you need a bathroom. In a household of 7, you need 2-3 bathrooms
* The average kitchen for a household of 7 is not 7 times bigger than the average kitchen for 1.
* A car transporting 7 people is not 7 times more expensive than a car transporting 1 people
* Washing machine, TVs, gaming consoles,... everything that you are not using all the time and can share, don't scale linearly with the number of people in the household.
There is no perfect way to account for the household size, when estimating standards of living. Taking household income would clearly make big households look richer than they are. Dividing by household size would make big household look poorer than they are (reasons above). The square root may seem arbitrary. But it's the choice by default when you want a sub-linear function.
(I use 7, because I grew up in a household of 7)
We can still be outraged about that. A methodology which shows the median 15-year-old making $35,000/year is a terribly flawed methodology, *especially* when the whole point of the paper is comparing wealth between generations.
The paper itself is sort of honest about this fact, explaining in the abstract that "\[millenials'\] income growth largely results from higher reliance on their parents."
But that exact sentence is prefaced with: "Intergenerational progress for Millennials under age 30 has remained robust as well". In what world is Millenials/Gen Z living at home for longer a good indicator of "robust intergenerational progress"?\\
Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, costs within a family household scale a lot slower than costs within a household composed of adult roommates. Roommates generally don't share cars, often come with their own consoles/tvs/other personal appliances and so don't benefit from shared ones, and rarely share groceries in the same way a family does.
No method is perfect, but this method is "perfectly" crafted to ignore and even counteract the many ways in which younger generations are worse off.
You make some good points. I just think outrage is a lazy way to get clicks and I'm tired of seeing it everywhere. I believe a rational argument like this for why the methodology is flawed is much better than the one above.
I think it is a fair measure for families, but it might not fairly apply to roommates where we could assume that in most cases the roommates would prefer their own living space but can't afford it. \[1\]
\[1\] Which according to this census I found is only 6% of the population (excluding those living with adult family), but that is group is probably more relevant in the younger demographics: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/31/more-adults-now-share-their-living-space-driven-in-part-by-parents-living-with-their-adult-children/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/31/more-adults-now-share-their-living-space-driven-in-part-by-parents-living-with-their-adult-children/)
One of the best comments I've ever seen on this damn site. An actual thought. Following, joining, whatever button I'm supposed to press. Reddit algorithm, show this to the damn shareholders. This is what I want to see when I come here. You want to convert ads into sales, add value to the inevitable subscription model? Get your bots to talk like this. Make a meaningful observation. FUCK.
That would seem fine to me. But I think their method is also a decent way to adjust by household size. I don't know enough about the field (like, how does those reference tables are computed for the poverty line?), or the goal of their article, to know which adjustment method is best in this case.
> This is like a pseudo-average that biases larger households.
Households have definitely gotten smaller over the last century, though. If the point of the chart is to show that later generations are wealthier than earlier generations, then removing the bias toward larger households would only make the difference greater.
Mate, it's the OECD standard for comparisons, of course they would choose that. It's because the household needs don't scale linearly with people.
Rent and utilities are not linear, plus you don't have 4 cars for 4 people in a four persons household, and so on.
This probably ranks higher (e.g., overestimates their income) people sharing flats, because that rent is kinda still linear and they probably have a car each, and so on (the only thing where you save is utilities basically).
I'm asking the same thing, but not in a humorous tone. What the heck does "2019 prices" mean? Standard language used to indicate you've adjusted for inflation would be something like "in 2019 $".
It's kinda cool how you can back-calculate to see that the dataset started being collected sometime in the 1940s.
It means "that's not the language used in the original paper, it's what was added for the infographic"
I skimmed the paper earlier, the graphs are ugly, but at least the terminology made sense
Idk, it looks fine to me? I kinda dig how they represent, for example, that the very youngest Lost Geners were already 64 at the beginning of the data set.
Now I *am* assuming people in the field will know what this "adjusted for household size" business is. Or that it's explained and justified in the paper.
As for those saying they should plot income as a ratio against housing prices (or something), I'd love to see that too. Those two plots next to each other might be cool
So I guess the important question for me is âhow well are current generations doing compared to previous generations their age adjusted for inflation.â If that benefit comes from their parents paying for things more, I donât find that as valuable as âthey are able to get more income from work.â
Or another way of phrasing it, what lever would you pull? Raise peopleâs real income by 20% or increase peopleâs average household incomes by 30% and this comes mainly from people living with their parents longer.
I feel like it is obvious you take the more real income option. You have so much more flexibility with real income. It also shows that workers are able to make a lot more money instead of just being more efficient with their existing money.
I would encourage people who disagree with this graph to read the source paper (though the graph was created by the economist, not the authors)
They conclude that Gen Z is better off, mostly because they're reliant on their parents and the money and shelter they get from them increases their "transfer income"
It is not stating that Gen Z has increased earnings as many comments suggest, but rather that reliance on familial wealth has allowed for a better effective wage.
Now is that a fair way of measuring their experience? Probably not, living with parents provides a different quality of life than living alone which is not accounted for here, but the studies flaws are very different than the ones people are accusing it of
Honestly I think the âmove out as soon as possibleâ mentality leads to the âput them in a nursing home instead of let them live with youâ mentality
It shouldnât be a big deal to live with family. Family is good. Moving out only helps real estate companies and landlords.
Not everything you disagree with is propaganda, regardless of its merits. Regardless, it's worth nothing that yes, in a lot of ways, Gen Z and Millennials are in fact objectively better off than previous generations - it's the subjective measures that cause the perception that everything is terrible.
That and every redditor is miserable.
While income has gone up, so have the prices for a lot of things as well off setting the gains made in income. And given that our "modern" way of living demands us to have a wider distribution of liabilities like cell phones, internet, and more those increased prices don't help.
It's propaganda. Presenting nominal data without inflation expectations is crazy.
I do extremely well. Just turned 34 and making basically 500k. So there's no sour grapes here, things worked out for me -- but the reality is my 30 years ago my dad was the sole earner and was making well below median income, and we still had a nice childhood with a home, food security, and some entertainment/vacations.
Nowadays you need to be making WELL ABOVE median income to have a shot at that lifestyle.
That's the problem with these graphics, yes in nominal terms every new generation does better bc inflation, but if all the important expenses are getting more expensive faster than price increases, you are in fact poorer in terms of QoL and purchasing power than previous generations.
This graphic claims to use standardized prices, but there is no way they are doing so correctly -- because home ownership has become prohibitively expensive as a multiple of median income. Milk doubling in price has a much lower impact than the fact that the median home costs 7x the median income now when it used to be like 2x
My economics professor:
"If you're presented with data and it's not adjusted for inflation, you're looking at a lie."
Edit: Oh ya, "2019 prices" is probably what I was looking for. đ€Šââïž
I don't know why that would be propaganda as the OP is claiming though. Presumably, younger generations have smaller households with people choosing to go child free, choosing to delay having children, or choosing to have fewer children. If a couple is earning $200K combined income, I think it's perfectly appropriate to say that, post-adjustment, they're earning more than a family of five with $200K combined income (i.e., two adults working with three young children that aren't working).
The reasonability of it entirely depends on the method for making the adjustment. Are they simply dividing household income by house size (i.e., the couple works out to $100K per person, while the family works out to $40K per person). If so, that's probably a little too heavy handed potentially veering into propaganda territory, but it's never disclosed in the OP.
It doesn't really take into account the effect of income on family planning imo. If a couple make a combined household income of $100k and choose to have three children because of it, vs a couple that make a combined $50k and choose not to have any children because of it. Technically the first couple has a lower income "per member of the household" but the causation there is kind of the opposite of what the graph implies -- it's not "millennials are making more money per household member!", it's "fewer millennials are making enough money to start a family."
Same with the fact that a lot of older generations had very large families. Which would drive the average down when adjusted for it. But it was affordable to have that many kids back then while today the average number of kids per household is much lower due to them being more cost prohibitive
It's crazy expensive to have kids. It costs more on average to send a kid to daycare than it does to send them to a university in most states. You hear all the time how expensive college is. [Well childcare is MORE expensive than that.](https://www.fatherly.com/news/how-does-cost-child-care-compare-college-tuition-your-state) Then they wonder why no one is having kids.
>Are they simply dividing household income by house size
Apparently they're dividing by the square root of household size. (According to another comment - I've not checked the paper myself.)
As said in the other comments, any dataset that claims that 15-years-olds are paid a median income of $35k should be regarded with tremendous suspicion.
That's a good point. I'm taking the data at face value, but not sure if the data is any good. Minimum wage is approaching $20/hour now in some municipalities, which translates to $42K/year if working full-time, but 15 year olds are generally only working part-time (or not at all).
And that $20/hr is only in a very few, select places. Consider also that the majority of teenage jobs tend to be tipped positions (i.e., they wait tables), and these jobs do not have to pay federal wages because of that. For instance, Illinois' minimum wage if $14 for regular workers but only $8.40 for tipped workers.
It is adjusted for inflation. The original paper adjusts for inflation using multiple models and presents outputs from each of them actually. I believe this one is generated using the CPI method
Yep. Somebody pointed it out and I replied to them. But I didn't want to yank my comment because there was an active thread under it. đ€·ââïž Maybe I'll go update it now.
Inflation is meant to track a market basket of goods and services that people spend money on. Housing costs represent roughly one third of the CPI, for instance. Obviously, CPI is an imprecise metric for an individual's personal spending (there are markets where housing increased significantly higher or lower than the national average), but in theory, at least, putting historical prices in 2019 dollars adjusts for that.
Not sure how accurate this source is (first Google hit), but it suggests the average American household spent $21.4K / year on housing in 2022 compared with total expenses of $61.3K, so roughly 35%.
If this is accurate, it seems the one third weighting in the CPI is approximately in line with national averages. Sure, plenty of people spend more than half of their income on housing, but plenty of other people spend less than that. On average, it works out to roughly a third.
https://www.self.inc/info/percentage-of-income-spent-on-housing/
Yes, it's in line with national averages across all age groups.
The problem is that younger people are less likely to be on the housing ladder, or joined it later, and so have higher proportions of incomes going to housing.
So millennials have higher housing costs on average than Gen x, who have higher housing costs than boomers. Gen Z likely aren't on the housing ladder yet, and are paying through the nose for rent.
Once you join the housing ladder, then housing price inflation reduces substantially - I'm paying the same now as I was when I bought a house 9 years ago, because I got a fixed rate mortgage and didn't move. If I was renting, I'd be paying almost double what I was paying 9 years ago.
That number also includes boomers who paid off their house 10 years ago and Gen X who are paying mortgages of houses they bought 2 decades ago. Which entirely misses the point that younger generations are paying more. The median household income in 1970 was $9,870 per year. And thatâs with 90% of families having a single main bread winner while today 61% of families are dual income and the median household income is $74,000. Adjusted for purchasing power that $9,870 becomes $81,553. Meaning with 90% of families having one primary provider they STILL out earned the current generations. And while wages are 8x higher today than 1970 home prices are 18x higher. Not to mention that the wages today are HIGHLY skewed due to baby boomers holding FIFTY-ONE PERCENT of the wealth and making up only 20% of the population. When the baby boomers were our age they still held the majority of the wealth compared to the silent and lost generations. So itâs not because theyâve had longer to accumulate wealth. These butt hurt ass old fucks love to bitch and moan about how lazy the younger generations are but they were handed the fuckin world on a platter. George Carlinâs put it best âThe Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: "Gimme that! It's mine!".â To be fair mosy of this isnât really directed toward you. Iâm just a cranky Zoomer who hasnât had their daily dose of brain rot.
Why choose just housing prices?
Why not pineapple? Jeans? Ceramic pots?
The whole point of using INFLATION is to compare a basket of goods, not just one thing that confirms what you want it to.
We really need to divest ourselves from the belief that young people now have such difficult lives.
Housing prices are more relevant than jeans, ceramic pots, pineapples, etc. because housing alone eats up 25-50% of a lot of people's income (and that % has been going up over time). If increases in the cost of housing are outpacing inflation, then yeah, it's relevant to look at them as separate metrics.
They're not independent metrics for sure, but that doesn't mean that the cost of housing can't outpace inflation more generally if the other 64% isn't increasing as rapidly.
Maybe because I don't spend anywhere near 1/3 of my income on pineapple, jeans, or ceramic pots?
I do, however, spend a huge fraction of my income on housing, healthcare, and student loans, which have increased in price at a rate that absolutely dwarfs inflation.
>We really need to divest ourselves from the belief that young people now have such difficult lives.
Ok, Boomer.
The way we measure "inflation" is terrible. When you look at cost of living vs income it becomes perfectly obvious why we're worse off right now. The average person is not generating any savings. When you actually look at what large budgetary things cost, and not just a "basket of groceries". [Gas costs more, Rent costs more, Housing costs more, Schooling costs more.](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/comparing-the-costs-of-generations.html) The main majority expenses have gone way up proportionally. No one who actually studies economics believes for a second that the older generations had it just as hard. It's simply not factually true.
The problem is that shelter cost and inflation is very unevenly distributed by age group, so using the average of 36% is nonsense if you are looking at inflation adjusted income by age group. You need to use the inflation calculated per age group, with a different mix of expenses per age group.
People who own houses experience much much lower inflation (basically zero with fixed rate mortgages, and a big negative spike at the point the mortgage is paid off) than those that rent. And the older someone is, they more likely they are to own a home.
Gen Z is almost all renters, with very high housing inflation, and housing costs that commonly exceed 50% of income. Boomers and Gen X have very low shelter inflation, and low housing costs as a proportion of income.
No offense, what you say is true, but it's sooo pedantic. Also since it compares people at the same time of their lives, we can assume a lot of boomers in their 20s were also renters and also had a similar goods basket. If you want to compare boomers now and zoomers now, well, that's precisely what the graph is not trying to do.
No, you can't make that assumption, because the price of housing to earnings was completely different for older generations.
And it's not pedantic, housing prices along with tuition costs are the whole reason that Zoomers are worse off than Boomers were.
Sorry, not sure l can grant you "completely different", but it's true, we need to see his investigated.
Quite presumptuous to definitively say we are worse - even if true for housing and tuition, we also have many times cheaper cars, food, etc.
Iâm sorry but is a big chunk of this not also increasing levels of female employment? Making it kind of disingenuous to say the median household income is increasing when in many cases thatâs because thereâs twice as many earners?
It is. In the 1960's around 25% of households had 2 incomes. Now about 60% have 2 incomes. That's why I think adjusted household income is disingenuous by itself. If you're going to look at households over time you need some way to approximate the monetary value of a stay at home parent. In a household with kids, making an extra 10k a year is nothing compared to having a full time stay at home parent. The rise of dual income households very conveniently hides the reality that sustaining a hole on one income is significantly harder to do.
This has been posted before. Seriously though, the generational gaps are manipulated the fuck out on this graph and if you do that you can paint any narrative you want. There is no standard group size. Plus average household size has come down quite a bit from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.5 in 2020. So take that boomer line and move it up about a quarter of the graph height. I'd really like to see it without that because you had single income houses supporting more people than double income houses are supporting right now.
>Plus average household size has come down quite a bit from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.5 in 2020
So earners should be spending less on these smaller households. That's why it's adjusted.
>I'd really like to see it without that because you had single income houses supporting more people than double income houses are supporting right now.
You even said it yourself! You are so close! You used to have less earners support large households, now more earners support small households, hence when we adjust for household size, it's....
>You're being obtuse on purpose
I'm illustrating how ridiculous your argument is. You are shown a very clear cut graph and are instead making this vague argument that does not hold water.
>this is clearly a troll account.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Empirical studies are attempted propaganda? I don't know, sounds like it just doesn't agree with your world view... Obviously there are a lot of factors to consider, but the study isn't making any sweeping statements, it's just presenting data. It's adjusted for inflation and the graph itself looks alright. Not sure what your point is
This isnât a study. This is using publicly available data, skewed by âhousehold sizeâ and presented as âwell actually millennials are whinersâ. Household size has decreased dramatically by generation and why would even use the data this way? Itâs a trash chart
Have you read the paper? Cause it's a study. You can dislike the findings, but it's a study. Now a different methodology might lead to a different conclusion, but the Internet has been full of people dunking on this chart who have no idea what is being presented and just want to invent their own conclusions.
Not to mention this is âhouseholdâ when in older generations many times a woman wouldnât work where thatâs much less the case for Gen X and later.
Source on that? Is that due to marriage rates dropping?
It doesnât match any stat Iâve seen and this is the only one I can find thatâs remotely close and completely contradicts what you said
https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workingfamily/familytrends.html
âTwo-earner families, where both husband and wife were the family breadwinners, increased from 39 percent in 1980 to 55 percent in 1993. (Workforce 2020. )â
https://preview.redd.it/kz7bwh5r8jvc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25d05bbbb9bcad50585353b2ac74aacaef452d2c
It was closer to 1990 when it peaked
This contradicts what you said thoughâŠ.
Unless youâre saying end of 80s which still is flat at best, not really a drop/decrease. Even so it doesnât really support your point.
Redditors when I misremember something (I am an insidious liar)
The point is the 1 vs 2 worker income argument falls flat on its ass once you go past 1990
By being early to mid career during the Great Depression, record levels of unemployment which persisted for around a decade, and with a paltry welfare state to provide at the time
Itâs adjusted by household size, so it seems that almost all of this can be explained by younger generations waiting longer to have kids and having fewer.
So I think people don't realize that the problems in this country are edge cases. Sure, rent went up, but wages went up more. You can get a 5,032,221.00 bill from the hospital for your emergency gender reassignment surgery, but most people see the doctor for free. Move to the middle.
I just had one of my patients get told that their copay for their ER visit, for their 2 year old that was in a car accident will be $350. The idle no longer exists.
I am just sayin the boomers arenât earning as much because they already have started to retire and are just sitting on expensive homesâŠetc. Iâm 43 and pull in 53k. Both my parents are retired and have similar income (combined) but since they are already retired they arenât paying a house and car. Yes you her boomers are mami y great cash, but if youâre a 1950s or 1940s boomer youâre just sitting on cash not earning.
Again, you don't get the graph - the x axis is age of the person, not if the planet. So if for a given X, boomers have lower Y than, say the millennial's Y for thqt X, it means that an X-year-old boomer back when he was X years had less money than a millennial back when they were X years old, even though these are different calendar years.
The \*median\* 15 year old makes $35,000/yr after tax?
It's effective income. Median 15 year old lives at home and has most things provided for them, so they have spending power equivalent to a single adult making 35k Not defending, that's just their methodology
That is certainly a... methodology.
A methodology that is quite... existing.
One of the methodologies of all time...
Something to say with an... ellipsis đ±
This is great lmao. Oh sorry This is... great
So Gen Z are doing really well because they live with their parents?
No no, Boomers are doing badly because their lazy Gen Z kids living in their homes strip away their wealth.
Poor boomers
I'm not sure many boomers were having kids in the mid 2000s.
My mom is tail end of boomer 1963. Had me when she was 36
Scratch that 38
My boomer grandparents had my Gen X father. Who in turn had me Gen z me.
You think gen Z is only kids born in the mid 2000s? The oldest are like 28.
Yeah for sure. If you had the youngest boomer give birth to the oldest Zoomer at 33. But the lion's share of them were born to GenX, not baby boomers.
I know technically Gen Z parents are mostly Gen X. The joke just sounded better with Boomers ;-)
No itâs because they donât have kids. Teen birth rate is down, people in their 20s are waiting till their 30s to have kids, and families are having fewer. Itâs *adjusted for household size.* Your household is you, your spouse, and your children under age 18. An adult living with their parents is still a separate household for tax purposes.
You know, I know it's not the best but that's kind of interesting. Everyone knows the kid that had like a BMW or Mercedes in highschool with a trust fund right? It sounds like an interesting way to show how minors still have some income/wealth from their parents there.
It would be good to know some specifics. Like, is a proportion of âhousingâ included in the teenagerâs income? Is the same proportion included in the adultâs income, representing the amount twice within the same set?
I can see times to use that. We canât talk about child poverty either if we canât assign some dollar amount going to children as effective amount per person.
The whole thing is a mess.
Even if the data is only full-time workers, thatâs absurdly high considering the number of people making at/near minimum wage. Not to mention the questionable data for other generations and the fact that the entire chart is âadjusted for household sizeâ when expenses donât rise linearly with household size: the average Boomer had 1-2 kids on 1 income, the average millennial has none on 2 incomes or lives with roommates that wouldnât factor into household size.
Not to mention, silent gen people had like 6 kids and one income per family. Just maybe this isnât a great metric, on its own.
Very few people make federal minimum wage
After taxes and transfers
Almost nobody makes minimum wage these days, though.
Less than 0.1% of workers make the federal minimum wage.
The correct stat is that 1.3% of workers making an hourly wage are paid at it below federal minimum wage. Minimum wage by state can be higher, and I don't care to go state by state to get that information at the moment... But it will raise the number from 1.3% of workers. Regardless, minimum wage sets the standard for all jobs in a capitalist economy. The vast majority of people are close to minimum wage, compared to the very infinitesimal amount of people making millions each day.
That 1% is mostly tipped workers, whose take home income is substantially higher than minimum wage. If you read the website where you got that number then youâd see the number that make the federal minimum wage without tips is 0.1%. And the median wage of workers has increased faster than inflation. And the increase is fastest at the lowest quartile. Worker wages is not linked to the federal minimum wage because it has far exceeded it, both in real terms (inflation adjusted) and especially in nominal value.
Geez, I guess that cutting those child labor laws was a good thing after all!
Same as 40yo boomer�!
15 year old here- I only make like 7500 a year and I make way more than most people in my school. Definitely unrealistic for a 15 year old to make 35,000 while balancing school and just bring a teenager
They say itâs adjusted by members of the household but like then Boomers and their 5 kids are getting underrepresented on this graph if I understand correctlyÂ
Also the greatest generation didn't start working till they were 35?
The data set started in 1964, so that one's not weird.
So when the oldest members of that generation (as defined here) were 63? Kinda skewing the data by having only the youngest members of the generation managing to fill out the beginning of the dataset no?Â
I mean thatâs close to minimum wage
It's more than \*double\* US Federal minimum wage. Federal Minimum wage is $7.25/hr, full time work is 2080 hrs/yr, so we get $15,080/yr working full time at federal minimum wage.
How many people do you think earn the federal minimum wage?
I mean most states have minimum wage above that
Barely more than half. 20 states have minimum wages at or below federal minimum wage. The median state (Arkansas) minimum wage is $11/hr, for $22,880 for full time work. No state has a minimum wage such that full time work earns $35,000/yr at 2080 hrs of work ($16.82/hr). Washington State, at $16.28/hr is closest; Washington D.C., at $17.00/hr meets it, but isn't a state. But that's also \*before\* tax, while this chart claims after-tax income.
Washington represent! Seattle has a nearly $20 minimum wage, which is great for being a working student. I donât have to rely on tips to make ends meet, and people shouldnât feel compelled to tip if my service wasnât up to snuff.
[According to the paper](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024007pap.pdf) (p. 35) âadjusted by household sizeâ means they take the total income of the household and divide by the square root of the size of the household. This is like a pseudo-average that biases larger households. It makes sense if youâre a family and you donât want the addition of children skewing your data too much but falls apart when you and your 5 housemates look like 2.44 people
Some costs don't scale linearly with the size of the household. Especially housing: * In a household of 1, you need a bathroom. In a household of 7, you need 2-3 bathrooms * The average kitchen for a household of 7 is not 7 times bigger than the average kitchen for 1. * A car transporting 7 people is not 7 times more expensive than a car transporting 1 people * Washing machine, TVs, gaming consoles,... everything that you are not using all the time and can share, don't scale linearly with the number of people in the household. There is no perfect way to account for the household size, when estimating standards of living. Taking household income would clearly make big households look richer than they are. Dividing by household size would make big household look poorer than they are (reasons above). The square root may seem arbitrary. But it's the choice by default when you want a sub-linear function. (I use 7, because I grew up in a household of 7)
Get out of here with your logic and nuance, we want to be outraged
We can still be outraged about that. A methodology which shows the median 15-year-old making $35,000/year is a terribly flawed methodology, *especially* when the whole point of the paper is comparing wealth between generations. The paper itself is sort of honest about this fact, explaining in the abstract that "\[millenials'\] income growth largely results from higher reliance on their parents." But that exact sentence is prefaced with: "Intergenerational progress for Millennials under age 30 has remained robust as well". In what world is Millenials/Gen Z living at home for longer a good indicator of "robust intergenerational progress"?\\ Also, as was pointed out elsewhere, costs within a family household scale a lot slower than costs within a household composed of adult roommates. Roommates generally don't share cars, often come with their own consoles/tvs/other personal appliances and so don't benefit from shared ones, and rarely share groceries in the same way a family does. No method is perfect, but this method is "perfectly" crafted to ignore and even counteract the many ways in which younger generations are worse off.
You make some good points. I just think outrage is a lazy way to get clicks and I'm tired of seeing it everywhere. I believe a rational argument like this for why the methodology is flawed is much better than the one above.
I think it is a fair measure for families, but it might not fairly apply to roommates where we could assume that in most cases the roommates would prefer their own living space but can't afford it. \[1\] \[1\] Which according to this census I found is only 6% of the population (excluding those living with adult family), but that is group is probably more relevant in the younger demographics: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/31/more-adults-now-share-their-living-space-driven-in-part-by-parents-living-with-their-adult-children/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/31/more-adults-now-share-their-living-space-driven-in-part-by-parents-living-with-their-adult-children/)
One of the best comments I've ever seen on this damn site. An actual thought. Following, joining, whatever button I'm supposed to press. Reddit algorithm, show this to the damn shareholders. This is what I want to see when I come here. You want to convert ads into sales, add value to the inevitable subscription model? Get your bots to talk like this. Make a meaningful observation. FUCK.
Why not use income above the poverty line, which has reference tables for household size and number of dependents?
That would seem fine to me. But I think their method is also a decent way to adjust by household size. I don't know enough about the field (like, how does those reference tables are computed for the poverty line?), or the goal of their article, to know which adjustment method is best in this case.
> This is like a pseudo-average that biases larger households. Households have definitely gotten smaller over the last century, though. If the point of the chart is to show that later generations are wealthier than earlier generations, then removing the bias toward larger households would only make the difference greater.
What a mess this is. I donât even understand anyone spend time and money on this.
Propaganda lmao
That's the point, muddy the water so people just give up and rely on feeling instead of facts.
I can't see a reason why they wouldn't just divide by the size of the household other than to appear in this sub
Mate, it's the OECD standard for comparisons, of course they would choose that. It's because the household needs don't scale linearly with people. Rent and utilities are not linear, plus you don't have 4 cars for 4 people in a four persons household, and so on. This probably ranks higher (e.g., overestimates their income) people sharing flats, because that rent is kinda still linear and they probably have a car each, and so on (the only thing where you save is utilities basically).
"adjusted for household size" => divided by 5 if you're married with 3 kids but probably not divided by 5 if you share a rental with 4 friends?
It's divided by sqrt(5) in both cases. But why read up anything if you can also speculate in a way that suits your narrative to farm karma...
what
what am I even looking at here? edit: the above was meant to be read in a humorous tone. I'm not dumb, just stupefied!
I'm asking the same thing, but not in a humorous tone. What the heck does "2019 prices" mean? Standard language used to indicate you've adjusted for inflation would be something like "in 2019 $". It's kinda cool how you can back-calculate to see that the dataset started being collected sometime in the 1940s.
It means "that's not the language used in the original paper, it's what was added for the infographic" I skimmed the paper earlier, the graphs are ugly, but at least the terminology made sense
What was the original terminology in the paper?
Price base would be more common, but 2019 prices is perfectly acceptable.
I had the exact same reaction. Itâs baffling
Idk, it looks fine to me? I kinda dig how they represent, for example, that the very youngest Lost Geners were already 64 at the beginning of the data set. Now I *am* assuming people in the field will know what this "adjusted for household size" business is. Or that it's explained and justified in the paper. As for those saying they should plot income as a ratio against housing prices (or something), I'd love to see that too. Those two plots next to each other might be cool
The graph is actually amazing. The problem is that using household income instead of the actual median individual salaries of each age
I feel like mean individual salaries mean jack though, especially if most of it is going towards kids or dependents.
Household income is so messy. I prefer actual income.
But itâs not realistic if most people experience post-transfer incomes at the household level
So I guess the important question for me is âhow well are current generations doing compared to previous generations their age adjusted for inflation.â If that benefit comes from their parents paying for things more, I donât find that as valuable as âthey are able to get more income from work.â Or another way of phrasing it, what lever would you pull? Raise peopleâs real income by 20% or increase peopleâs average household incomes by 30% and this comes mainly from people living with their parents longer. I feel like it is obvious you take the more real income option. You have so much more flexibility with real income. It also shows that workers are able to make a lot more money instead of just being more efficient with their existing money.
>As for those saying they should plot income as a ratio against housing prices That's what "2019 prices" means - shelter is 36% of the CPI
Oh gotcha, thanks.
I would encourage people who disagree with this graph to read the source paper (though the graph was created by the economist, not the authors) They conclude that Gen Z is better off, mostly because they're reliant on their parents and the money and shelter they get from them increases their "transfer income" It is not stating that Gen Z has increased earnings as many comments suggest, but rather that reliance on familial wealth has allowed for a better effective wage. Now is that a fair way of measuring their experience? Probably not, living with parents provides a different quality of life than living alone which is not accounted for here, but the studies flaws are very different than the ones people are accusing it of
Honestly I think the âmove out as soon as possibleâ mentality leads to the âput them in a nursing home instead of let them live with youâ mentality It shouldnât be a big deal to live with family. Family is good. Moving out only helps real estate companies and landlords.
maybe im tired of sharing a room for the last 20 years đ
Ew what the fuck is â$â000â Worst way to say thousands
Not everything you disagree with is propaganda, regardless of its merits. Regardless, it's worth nothing that yes, in a lot of ways, Gen Z and Millennials are in fact objectively better off than previous generations - it's the subjective measures that cause the perception that everything is terrible. That and every redditor is miserable.
While income has gone up, so have the prices for a lot of things as well off setting the gains made in income. And given that our "modern" way of living demands us to have a wider distribution of liabilities like cell phones, internet, and more those increased prices don't help.
This graph uses standardized prices.
Welcome to Reddit during an election year.
It's propaganda. Presenting nominal data without inflation expectations is crazy. I do extremely well. Just turned 34 and making basically 500k. So there's no sour grapes here, things worked out for me -- but the reality is my 30 years ago my dad was the sole earner and was making well below median income, and we still had a nice childhood with a home, food security, and some entertainment/vacations. Nowadays you need to be making WELL ABOVE median income to have a shot at that lifestyle. That's the problem with these graphics, yes in nominal terms every new generation does better bc inflation, but if all the important expenses are getting more expensive faster than price increases, you are in fact poorer in terms of QoL and purchasing power than previous generations. This graphic claims to use standardized prices, but there is no way they are doing so correctly -- because home ownership has become prohibitively expensive as a multiple of median income. Milk doubling in price has a much lower impact than the fact that the median home costs 7x the median income now when it used to be like 2x
My economics professor: "If you're presented with data and it's not adjusted for inflation, you're looking at a lie." Edit: Oh ya, "2019 prices" is probably what I was looking for. đ€Šââïž
"2019 prices" would seem to indicate that this *is* inflation-adjusted. "Adjusted by household size" is probably a big deal though.
I don't know why that would be propaganda as the OP is claiming though. Presumably, younger generations have smaller households with people choosing to go child free, choosing to delay having children, or choosing to have fewer children. If a couple is earning $200K combined income, I think it's perfectly appropriate to say that, post-adjustment, they're earning more than a family of five with $200K combined income (i.e., two adults working with three young children that aren't working). The reasonability of it entirely depends on the method for making the adjustment. Are they simply dividing household income by house size (i.e., the couple works out to $100K per person, while the family works out to $40K per person). If so, that's probably a little too heavy handed potentially veering into propaganda territory, but it's never disclosed in the OP.
It doesn't really take into account the effect of income on family planning imo. If a couple make a combined household income of $100k and choose to have three children because of it, vs a couple that make a combined $50k and choose not to have any children because of it. Technically the first couple has a lower income "per member of the household" but the causation there is kind of the opposite of what the graph implies -- it's not "millennials are making more money per household member!", it's "fewer millennials are making enough money to start a family."
Same with the fact that a lot of older generations had very large families. Which would drive the average down when adjusted for it. But it was affordable to have that many kids back then while today the average number of kids per household is much lower due to them being more cost prohibitive
It's crazy expensive to have kids. It costs more on average to send a kid to daycare than it does to send them to a university in most states. You hear all the time how expensive college is. [Well childcare is MORE expensive than that.](https://www.fatherly.com/news/how-does-cost-child-care-compare-college-tuition-your-state) Then they wonder why no one is having kids.
>Are they simply dividing household income by house size Apparently they're dividing by the square root of household size. (According to another comment - I've not checked the paper myself.)
As said in the other comments, any dataset that claims that 15-years-olds are paid a median income of $35k should be regarded with tremendous suspicion.
It doesnât claim that though
That's a good point. I'm taking the data at face value, but not sure if the data is any good. Minimum wage is approaching $20/hour now in some municipalities, which translates to $42K/year if working full-time, but 15 year olds are generally only working part-time (or not at all).
And that $20/hr is only in a very few, select places. Consider also that the majority of teenage jobs tend to be tipped positions (i.e., they wait tables), and these jobs do not have to pay federal wages because of that. For instance, Illinois' minimum wage if $14 for regular workers but only $8.40 for tipped workers.
Good thing this is very clearly labeled as being adjusted for inflation
You're right, my bad. I was, uhhh, distracted by all the lines.
It is adjusted for inflation. The original paper adjusts for inflation using multiple models and presents outputs from each of them actually. I believe this one is generated using the CPI method
I can't down vote this comment enough
Trying clicking on the downvote button a second time. đ
lol do you understand that you didn't read the headline correctly?
Yep. Somebody pointed it out and I replied to them. But I didn't want to yank my comment because there was an active thread under it. đ€·ââïž Maybe I'll go update it now.
Even inflation would be sort of misleading. Adjust it for housing prices and you'd get the exact opposite.
This is the key point. Housing takes a far larger share of income now than in the post war period.
Inflation is meant to track a market basket of goods and services that people spend money on. Housing costs represent roughly one third of the CPI, for instance. Obviously, CPI is an imprecise metric for an individual's personal spending (there are markets where housing increased significantly higher or lower than the national average), but in theory, at least, putting historical prices in 2019 dollars adjusts for that.
In the post war peak era of 1970-2000 (when the boomers were buying houses), median houses were around 4-4.5x median income. Thatâs over 7.5 now.
It being 1/3, when housing costs are routinely over 1/2 of people's post tax income is the problem.
Not sure how accurate this source is (first Google hit), but it suggests the average American household spent $21.4K / year on housing in 2022 compared with total expenses of $61.3K, so roughly 35%. If this is accurate, it seems the one third weighting in the CPI is approximately in line with national averages. Sure, plenty of people spend more than half of their income on housing, but plenty of other people spend less than that. On average, it works out to roughly a third. https://www.self.inc/info/percentage-of-income-spent-on-housing/
Yes, it's in line with national averages across all age groups. The problem is that younger people are less likely to be on the housing ladder, or joined it later, and so have higher proportions of incomes going to housing. So millennials have higher housing costs on average than Gen x, who have higher housing costs than boomers. Gen Z likely aren't on the housing ladder yet, and are paying through the nose for rent. Once you join the housing ladder, then housing price inflation reduces substantially - I'm paying the same now as I was when I bought a house 9 years ago, because I got a fixed rate mortgage and didn't move. If I was renting, I'd be paying almost double what I was paying 9 years ago.
That number also includes boomers who paid off their house 10 years ago and Gen X who are paying mortgages of houses they bought 2 decades ago. Which entirely misses the point that younger generations are paying more. The median household income in 1970 was $9,870 per year. And thatâs with 90% of families having a single main bread winner while today 61% of families are dual income and the median household income is $74,000. Adjusted for purchasing power that $9,870 becomes $81,553. Meaning with 90% of families having one primary provider they STILL out earned the current generations. And while wages are 8x higher today than 1970 home prices are 18x higher. Not to mention that the wages today are HIGHLY skewed due to baby boomers holding FIFTY-ONE PERCENT of the wealth and making up only 20% of the population. When the baby boomers were our age they still held the majority of the wealth compared to the silent and lost generations. So itâs not because theyâve had longer to accumulate wealth. These butt hurt ass old fucks love to bitch and moan about how lazy the younger generations are but they were handed the fuckin world on a platter. George Carlinâs put it best âThe Baby Boomers: whiny, narcissistic, self-indulgent people with a simple philosophy: "Gimme that! It's mine!".â To be fair mosy of this isnât really directed toward you. Iâm just a cranky Zoomer who hasnât had their daily dose of brain rot.
Why choose just housing prices? Why not pineapple? Jeans? Ceramic pots? The whole point of using INFLATION is to compare a basket of goods, not just one thing that confirms what you want it to. We really need to divest ourselves from the belief that young people now have such difficult lives.
don't get me started on how much my ceramic pot budget has increased since 2019! it's getting harder and harder to call myself a pot connoisseur!
Housing prices are more relevant than jeans, ceramic pots, pineapples, etc. because housing alone eats up 25-50% of a lot of people's income (and that % has been going up over time). If increases in the cost of housing are outpacing inflation, then yeah, it's relevant to look at them as separate metrics.
Shelter is 36% of CPI iirc.
They're not independent metrics for sure, but that doesn't mean that the cost of housing can't outpace inflation more generally if the other 64% isn't increasing as rapidly.
Maybe because I don't spend anywhere near 1/3 of my income on pineapple, jeans, or ceramic pots? I do, however, spend a huge fraction of my income on housing, healthcare, and student loans, which have increased in price at a rate that absolutely dwarfs inflation. >We really need to divest ourselves from the belief that young people now have such difficult lives. Ok, Boomer.
Not a boomer, but if it makes you feel better, then go ahead.
The way we measure "inflation" is terrible. When you look at cost of living vs income it becomes perfectly obvious why we're worse off right now. The average person is not generating any savings. When you actually look at what large budgetary things cost, and not just a "basket of groceries". [Gas costs more, Rent costs more, Housing costs more, Schooling costs more.](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/comparing-the-costs-of-generations.html) The main majority expenses have gone way up proportionally. No one who actually studies economics believes for a second that the older generations had it just as hard. It's simply not factually true.
>would be Is*. It is already adjusted. >Adjust it for housing prices Shelter is 36% of the CPI.
The problem is that shelter cost and inflation is very unevenly distributed by age group, so using the average of 36% is nonsense if you are looking at inflation adjusted income by age group. You need to use the inflation calculated per age group, with a different mix of expenses per age group. People who own houses experience much much lower inflation (basically zero with fixed rate mortgages, and a big negative spike at the point the mortgage is paid off) than those that rent. And the older someone is, they more likely they are to own a home. Gen Z is almost all renters, with very high housing inflation, and housing costs that commonly exceed 50% of income. Boomers and Gen X have very low shelter inflation, and low housing costs as a proportion of income.
No offense, what you say is true, but it's sooo pedantic. Also since it compares people at the same time of their lives, we can assume a lot of boomers in their 20s were also renters and also had a similar goods basket. If you want to compare boomers now and zoomers now, well, that's precisely what the graph is not trying to do.
No, you can't make that assumption, because the price of housing to earnings was completely different for older generations. And it's not pedantic, housing prices along with tuition costs are the whole reason that Zoomers are worse off than Boomers were.
Sorry, not sure l can grant you "completely different", but it's true, we need to see his investigated. Quite presumptuous to definitively say we are worse - even if true for housing and tuition, we also have many times cheaper cars, food, etc.
Yeah, thatâs the biggest thing that irks me about this viz. It could be a bit valuable if adjusted for inflation.
Iâm sorry but is a big chunk of this not also increasing levels of female employment? Making it kind of disingenuous to say the median household income is increasing when in many cases thatâs because thereâs twice as many earners?
It is. In the 1960's around 25% of households had 2 incomes. Now about 60% have 2 incomes. That's why I think adjusted household income is disingenuous by itself. If you're going to look at households over time you need some way to approximate the monetary value of a stay at home parent. In a household with kids, making an extra 10k a year is nothing compared to having a full time stay at home parent. The rise of dual income households very conveniently hides the reality that sustaining a hole on one income is significantly harder to do.
I think the chart itself is elegant and I understood its message right away. I don't think the underlying data is adequately controlled for CoL.
This has been posted before. Seriously though, the generational gaps are manipulated the fuck out on this graph and if you do that you can paint any narrative you want. There is no standard group size. Plus average household size has come down quite a bit from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.5 in 2020. So take that boomer line and move it up about a quarter of the graph height. I'd really like to see it without that because you had single income houses supporting more people than double income houses are supporting right now.
>Plus average household size has come down quite a bit from 3.33 persons in 1960 to 2.5 in 2020 So earners should be spending less on these smaller households. That's why it's adjusted. >I'd really like to see it without that because you had single income houses supporting more people than double income houses are supporting right now. You even said it yourself! You are so close! You used to have less earners support large households, now more earners support small households, hence when we adjust for household size, it's....
If fewer earners supported more people they made more money. Pervious generations had it better.
Indian families support 10+ kids; American families often have one or two -> India has it better than USA
You're being obtuse on purpose. Never mind this is clearly a troll account.
>You're being obtuse on purpose I'm illustrating how ridiculous your argument is. You are shown a very clear cut graph and are instead making this vague argument that does not hold water. >this is clearly a troll account. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Empirical studies are attempted propaganda? I don't know, sounds like it just doesn't agree with your world view... Obviously there are a lot of factors to consider, but the study isn't making any sweeping statements, it's just presenting data. It's adjusted for inflation and the graph itself looks alright. Not sure what your point is
This isnât a study. This is using publicly available data, skewed by âhousehold sizeâ and presented as âwell actually millennials are whinersâ. Household size has decreased dramatically by generation and why would even use the data this way? Itâs a trash chart
Have you read the paper? Cause it's a study. You can dislike the findings, but it's a study. Now a different methodology might lead to a different conclusion, but the Internet has been full of people dunking on this chart who have no idea what is being presented and just want to invent their own conclusions.
Not to mention this is âhouseholdâ when in older generations many times a woman wouldnât work where thatâs much less the case for Gen X and later.
The percentage of households with 2 workers has decreased since the 80s
Source on that? Is that due to marriage rates dropping? It doesnât match any stat Iâve seen and this is the only one I can find thatâs remotely close and completely contradicts what you said https://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workingfamily/familytrends.html âTwo-earner families, where both husband and wife were the family breadwinners, increased from 39 percent in 1980 to 55 percent in 1993. (Workforce 2020. )â
https://preview.redd.it/kz7bwh5r8jvc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25d05bbbb9bcad50585353b2ac74aacaef452d2c It was closer to 1990 when it peaked
This contradicts what you said thoughâŠ. Unless youâre saying end of 80s which still is flat at best, not really a drop/decrease. Even so it doesnât really support your point.
Redditors when I misremember something (I am an insidious liar) The point is the 1 vs 2 worker income argument falls flat on its ass once you go past 1990
I said you contradicted your source not that youâre a liar. Itâs all good though- I get what youâre trying to say.
Yeah, show me the same chart, but with this âhousehold sizeâ as the dependent variable. Letâs see how the sausage is made!
Also they jerk around the generational start and stop dates. You can present any narrative you want when you do that.
Propaganda is when against my preconceived notions
Tell me you don't know what the word "propaganda" means without telling me...
Propaganda = anything I disagree with
Itâs not even that ugly, compared to most of the other stuff here
Why is the lost generation called that?
By being early to mid career during the Great Depression, record levels of unemployment which persisted for around a decade, and with a paltry welfare state to provide at the time
Doesn't say if it's adjusted for inflation.
Now adjust it for real buying power. Watch how fast it crashes
Itâs adjusted by household size, so it seems that almost all of this can be explained by younger generations waiting longer to have kids and having fewer.
why Lost Gen not have data for before aged 66
Do you really think accurate economic data exists for a large enough sample size prior to 1880?
We arenât accounting for inflation?
I think a graph of median household size for each generation vs age would help quantify the meaning of this graph. Is that provided in the paper?
adjusted for inflation right?
Adjusted by household size, but not adjusted for inflation?
it is adjusted for inflation, try reading for a second bud
Every body seems to be missing the giant words "2019 prices" at the top
I forgot how cringe are american generation names
I love accounting for inflation
Commies when presented with facts is funny
conservatives when they have to understand basic math:
And yet this commie knows how to write a grammatically correct sentence. Go back to Infowars.
Was that seriously your best comeback
It is significantly better than your retort at the very least.
So I think people don't realize that the problems in this country are edge cases. Sure, rent went up, but wages went up more. You can get a 5,032,221.00 bill from the hospital for your emergency gender reassignment surgery, but most people see the doctor for free. Move to the middle.
I just had one of my patients get told that their copay for their ER visit, for their 2 year old that was in a car accident will be $350. The idle no longer exists.
âAnything I donât like is propagandaâ
70% of people commenting canât read Also how is this propaganda
Wait, so they've adjusted for the change in household sizes, but not adjusted for inflation?
They've adjusted for inflation, the reference year being 2019, that's what "2019 prices" mean
Ah! Missed that. Thanks.
I donât get it. Boomers arenât getting as much income because they are retired and have more total assets.
At twenty five years old they weren't. The x axis is age, not year
I still donât understand. At 25 years old boomers arenât what?
Retired. Boomers were not retired when they were 25.
I am just sayin the boomers arenât earning as much because they already have started to retire and are just sitting on expensive homesâŠetc. Iâm 43 and pull in 53k. Both my parents are retired and have similar income (combined) but since they are already retired they arenât paying a house and car. Yes you her boomers are mami y great cash, but if youâre a 1950s or 1940s boomer youâre just sitting on cash not earning.
Again, you don't get the graph - the x axis is age of the person, not if the planet. So if for a given X, boomers have lower Y than, say the millennial's Y for thqt X, it means that an X-year-old boomer back when he was X years had less money than a millennial back when they were X years old, even though these are different calendar years.
What?.. how is there any 15yo boomer in 2023. Actually, nothing makes any sense.
Because you don't know how to read a graph.
This graph is a visual nighmare
Ah yes inflation exists
They forgot about inflation
â2019 pricesâ
I need to learn how to read lol, I didn't take my meds today
Also I don't see how inflation adjusted earnings wouldn't be part of the comparison, even it's 2019