New data indicates that millennials are poorer than their parents were when they were in their 20s during the 1970s.
While it’s easy to pass judgment on millennials as a bunch of spoiled, ungrateful chumps who mooch off their parents and enjoy the luxuries of new technology like iPhones and Uber, recent findings say otherwise.
Median income among those aged 25-34 years has remained roughly stagnant at $34,000 from 1977 to 2016, but the median debt held by individuals of that same age group has more than tripled during this time-span — from $10,000 in 1977 to $34,000 in 2016. While there are a number of factors that may have contributed to this phenomenon, the financial practices of the United States higher education system share much of the blame.
For starters, the main culprit has been the astronomical increases in student tuition by colleges and universities since the late 1970s — a predatory practice that has completely been enabled by a willingness of the federal government to fund these colleges and universities on the backs of poor students who just want to gain enough education to succeed in life. According to data collected by Axios, the average cost of attending a four-year public college increased nearly 250 percent from $8,000 in 1977 to $20,000 in 2016.
Unsurprisingly, despite the sharp increases in student tuition since the late 1970s, the number of students attending college has also increased. A large part of this is due to an increased willingness by the federal government to allow students to take on large amounts of educational debt. While only 24 percent of Americans aged 25-34 were attending college in 1977, that number grew to 37 percent by 2016.
The survey also found that young Americans were less likely to be married, less likely to have children, and more likely to be living with their parents.
