Suppose you are a young man in your 30s thinking about how you are doing compared with what life was like for your father at the same age — that is, back in the mid-1970s. While individual experiences will obviously vary, a recent analysis done at Brookings and released by The Pew Charitable Trusts shows that, on average, young men in their 30s actually have lower incomes, after adjusting for inflation, than their father’s generation did at the same age.
What could account for this decline in earnings across the two generations? One possibility is that young men are working somewhat fewer hours than their fathers did. Some may still be in school or in the early stages of their careers. With education being increasingly important for success in today’s economy, it may make sense to get as much education as possible, thereby increasing one’s eventual earning power but at the cost of a slower start on one’s career.
