Better Off? How Generational Progress Slowed in the U.S.

Bettering yourself financially or at least giving your children the opportunity for a more prosperous future has driven people to emigrate to the United States for generations. But is the next generation still better off in this day and age?

The answer is yes, but not by that much. At least this is the verdict given in a discussion paper published by the Federal Reserve Board of Washington D.C. in 2024. It concludes that millennials' median household income at 36 to 40 years old was still 18 percent higher than that of Generation X at the same age. A millennial born in 1982 would have turned 40 in 2022, the last year the study looked at.

Gen X achieved a similarly low increase of median household incomes over Baby Boomers at 16 percent. This is in contrast to the post-war generation, which at age 36-40 earned 27 percent more than the Silent Generation. For this generation growing up during World War II, the number still stood at 34 percent on average.

Taking as a baseline the Greatest Generation, which was born between 1900 and 1927, the Silent Generation earned 34 percent more, while Boomers made a cumulative 70 percent more, Gen X took home 97 percent more and finally Millennials brought in 133 percent more than the Greatest Generation even when adjusted for inflation. The data also shows that the Silent Generation worked 14 percent more hours than the generation before and Boomers worked another 14 percent more. However, working hours have been relatively stable for generations since.

While the numbers show that average income wealth rose in the United States over time and that more people gained access to at least a middle-class life over the decades, this doesn't mean that everybody is necessarily making more than those who came before. A study published in 2017 and widely reported then showed that only 50 percent of people born in 1984 made more than their parents at age 30. For those born in 1940 and turning 30 in 1970, this number had still been above 90 percent.