3/14/2024 0 Comments Keep calm and carry on movement![]() ![]() Also at record highs is college loan indebtedness, which passed $1 trillion in 2011. Today, the share of 25- to 29-year-olds with 4-year college degrees (at 33 percent) and high-school diplomas (at 90 percent) are both at record highs. Unable to get jobs, record numbers are working to get degrees. Millennials were achievement-oriented before-and that too continues. By all accounts (for instance, this AARP study), these first-wave Millennials get along very well with their Boomer parents and collaborate effectively on a wide range of daily tasks. A full 24 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds now live with their parents, up from only 11 percent back in 1980. Millennials were close to their families before-and now even more so. ![]() And economists Lisa Dettling and Joanne Hsu find that Millennials are actually less likely to have credit-card, auto, or housing debt than Gen Xers were at the same age. According to DC funds data, they have the most conservative portfolio selection of any age bracket under age 65. Once on the job, they want to max out on benefits from pensions to insurance. Most aspire to a stable career within a big corporation-and, remarkably, a higher share of them think job security is “extremely important” than either Xers or Boomers. Teen drinking and smoking rates have also plunged to historic lows.Ĭontrary to stereotype, most Millennials try to avoid economic risks as well. Serious violent crime among teens, as well as rates of teen pregnancy and abortion, has fallen swiftly and dramatically. Since Millennials began entering their teen years in the mid-1990s, rates of personal risk-taking among this age bracket have plummeted. Millennials were risk-averse before-and now even more so. Along the way, the tough economy is also reinforcing generational traits that Millennials possessed even before the recession began. Interestingly, this age group shows by far the biggest jump between 2008 to 2014- from 25 to 49 percent-in the share of Americans who consider themselves “lower” or “lower-middle” class. A rising share of young adults age 30 and under are putting off marriages, births, home purchases, car purchases, and relocation. It’s also true that the majority of Millennials looking for work have as yet been unable to find secure and salaried careers-leading to lives that are literally on hold. Many media reports about Millennials’ economic prospects have focused exclusively on how the Great Recession is likely to reduce their average earnings for many years to come, no matter how much the economy improves. As we might expect, this location in history has had a major impact on Millennials’ collective personality and generational behavior. Given all this adult attention, it’s no wonder that this rising generation has developed a sense of specialness, to themselves, to their parents, and to the wider community. By the mid-1990s, politicians were defining adult issues (from tax cuts to internet access) in terms of their effects on kids and teens. Educators spoke of raising standards and No Child Left Behind. The “Goals 2000” movement-targeting first-wave Millennials born in 1982-demanded improved student achievement from the high school Class of 2000. Meanwhile, the media spotlight honed in on Millennials’ academic achievement. In the early 1980s, “Baby on Board” signs began to appear, attached to new child-friendly minivans loaded with safety gadgets. Child abuse and child safety became hot topics as rates of divorce, abortion, and violence against children fell steadily. With “family values” ascendant, Boomer (and later Xer) parents began spending much more time with their kids than their own parents ever spent with them. Young children began to receive more structure and protection. By the time Millennials came onto the scene, social and family experimentation was ebbing. They have no memory of the Consciousness Revolution that was so defining for coming-of-age Boomers nor the hands-off parenting era in which Gen-X children were raised. The first Millennials were born in the early 1980s. ![]()
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