The American Dream typically includes a home with a white picket fence, but what happens when younger generations can only afford the fence?
A new research paper has found the millennial generation is giving up on the thought of ever buying a house with experts estimating fewer will live out the American Dream of becoming homeowners.
Economists Seung Hyeong Lee of Northwestern University and Younggeun Yoo of the University of Chicago recently published a paper looking at homeownership rates of Americans born in the 1990s and how their attitudes toward homeownership may affect their behavior.
Lee and Yoo estimate just about 74% of people born in 1990 will become homeowners by retirement, a 9.6% decline from the nearly 84 percent of people born in 1950 who have bought a house.
“by retirement”
Another thing millennials will broadly never approach. Between systematic under-pay with 2-3% increases in wages, high inflation, exploded housing costs, predatory financial system (credit cards, BNPL), etc. I’d guess 5% of people will actually “retire” in the normal sense of stopping work in their 60s.
Physical and mental health are so affected by the vice in which Americans are crushed, many will not live to see retirement anyway.