Grand, yeah.
Another day, another ‘young people spend their money on frivolous things and that’s the real reason they’ll never afford a house’ argument.
In the financial firing line this time around – your (admittedly increasingly costly) Netflix subscription. No season two of Squid Game for you, mate!
A new study carried out by researchers at King’s College London focused on what advice ‘baby boomers’ – people born between 1946 and 1964 – might have for millennials – 1981 and 1996 – in this inflation-heavy day and age.
Top of the list; cancel the Netflix sub, scale back on takeaways – food and coffee – and do away with other “luxury” lifestyle options. The UK Times highlights further contentious avenues of the study, including booking holidays abroad and buying expensive mobile phones.
The study, titled ‘Housing, hard work and identity: generational experiences and attitudes’, specifically surveyed the UK public, but the ongoing contrast between boomer and millennial living – and, indeed, realistic expectations – represents a universal and stark conversation.
We won’t bring Generation Z into it for, as a millennial, I simply do not have the strength. As for the King’s College data, it does at least find room for common sense acknowledgement, with three in four (76%) of those interviewed agreeing that the key reasons young adults today can’t afford to buy their own homes is due to an overall societal systemic failure, factoring in escalating house prices and low wage growth.
However, a prevailing attitude emerges, arguing that the youth of today simply do not work as hard as people from previous generations.
“The suggestion that the huge challenges young people face in buying their own home can be solved by skipping fancy coffees and Netflix entirely misses the point – but it’s still believed by half the public,” says Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London.
“But it also reflects our general tendency to think bad of today’s young people. Throughout history, people always think the current youth are the worst ever, as seen in the half of people who agree with a quote, often attributed to Socrates back in 400 BC, berating young people for their love of luxury, gossip and bad manners.
“We also tend to think of young people as lazy, with half of people again saying they are less motivated at work than older people. But we think better of young people from our own youth: only 29% think young people were less motivated than older workers when we ourselves were young.”
Duffy suggests that part of this perception stems from how people “now live much more separately than in the past”, pointing to a higher concentration of young people in cities in comparison to older people residing in smaller towns and villages.
“Generational labels, like Baby Boomers and Millennials, is also part of the problem, as there are so many stereotypes attached to each,” Duffy adds. “The public do, however, recognise this – with over half saying the labels are about as useful – or useless – as star signs.”
You can read the full study here, if you haven’t already switched Netflix on.
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