The millennial income progress has held back due to the worldwide financial crisis.
The global financial crisis had a major impact on income gains for millennials, according to a new study that looked at the economic generation gap in eight advanced industrial economies.
In the report published Feb. 19, the UK-based Resolution Foundation think tank found that millennials, currently in their early thirties, had household incomes four percent lower than members of Generation X, born between 1966 and 1980.
Most notable was the data collected from the UK itself. In Britain, members of Generation X were 54 percent better off than baby boomers born between 1946 and 1965, yet millennials, born between 1980 and 2000, had incomes just six percent higher than the former group at the same age.
The gap was also reflected in home ownership, where only 33 percent of millennials in their late twenties currently own homes compared to 60 percent for baby boomers at the same age.
“Only Spain echoes the UK experience — a ‘boom and bust’ cycle where significant generation-on-generation gains for older generations have come to a stop for young people,” wrote Daniel Tomlinson, a policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation.
Generation-on-generation gains were also minimal in the U.S. and Germany, according to the study. In the U.S., average incomes for Americans nearing the age of 50, or born in the late 1960s, are no higher than for those born in the 1920s. Scandinavian countries, notably Norway and Denmark, had seen less of an impact despite them also experiencing recession during the financial crisis.
“It’s no secret that the financial crisis hit the vast majority of advanced economies hard, holding back millennial income progress in countries around the world,” the report said.
