Americans of Generation Z are leaving their European cousins ​​behind

Unlock Editor’s Digest for free

FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The idea behind the concept of generations is that people born at a certain time share similar experiences, which in turn shape common attitudes.

The “greater” and “silent” generations, born in the first decades of the 20th century, witnessed economic adversity and global conflict, and later formed relatively leftist views. Baby boomers grew up accustomed to growth and prosperity, and leaned heavily toward the conservative side.

It was a similar story for millennials, who entered adulthood after the global financial crisis to find high unemployment, anemic income growth and a skyrocketing ratio of house prices to incomes, and then they defended strongly progressive policies.

Many analyzes and discourses treat millennials and Generation Z as close cousins, united in their struggle to achieve the prosperity of previous generations. But the validity of that elision depends a lot on where you look.

Millennials across the Western world truly were united in their economic malaise. From the United States and Canada to Britain and Western Europe, the cohort born in the mid- to late-1980s lived their formative adult years against a backdrop of weak or stagnant wage growth and declining homeownership rates.

Absolute upward mobility (the extent to which members of a generation earn more than their parents’ generation at the same age) steadily declined. In the United States, by the time someone born in 1985 turned 30, their average income was only a small percentage higher than that of their parents at the same age, a far cry from the clear and palpable generation-over-generation gains from age 50 to age 50. 60 percent did so from those born in the 1950s.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the narrative of millennial unrest is not a myth. They may come to be considered the most economically unfortunate generation of the last century.

But then we came to a fork in the road. For young adults in Britain and most of Western Europe, conditions have only worsened since then. If you thought the sub-1 percent annual growth in living standards that millennials endured was bad, try sub-zero. Britons born in the mid-1990s have seen their living standards not only stagnate but decline. Across Europe there is very little for younger adults to be happy about.

But in America, Generation Z is moving forward. Living standards in the United States have grown at an average of 2.5 percent annually since the cohort born in the late 1990s entered adulthood, blessing this generation not only with upward mobility much higher than that of their millennial elders, but with living standards that improve more rapidly than the young boomers. at the same age. And it’s not just about income: Gen Z Americans are also outpacing millennials in moving up the housing ladder.

Everything seems to indicate that in the United States the slowdown in economic progress from generation to generation, which has already lasted for decades, has not only stopped but has been reversed. Americans born in 1995 enjoy even greater upward mobility relative to their parents than those born in 1965. Zoomers by name, zoomers by socioeconomic nature.

Both the change in the economic trajectories of young Americans and the divergence from their European counterparts raise interesting questions.

From a sociological perspective, in an era of borderless social media narratives and algorithms that reward negativity, can the young adult adversity meme survive America’s Generation Z contact with reality? And with a stream of negative social comparisons just a smartphone away, how will the growing realization that young Americans are on a higher trajectory affect young Europeans?

As for politics, will the younger cohort of American voters go their own way? The fact that it was not only younger men but also young women who supported Donald Trump in the US election suggests that this may be happening already. A group that comes to consider itself one of life’s winners may not develop the same instinct for social solidarity that its downtrodden predecessors came to have.

In an era of “shifting vibrations,” the shift from a sense of downward mobility to one of increasing prosperity may prove to be the biggest yet. A divergence in the music scene on both sides of the Atlantic is also sure to inject new urgency into Europe’s quest for a rebound of its own.

Whichever way you look at it, the restart of the economic conveyor belt in the United States could prove to be a hugely significant moment.

john.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch