The following insights come with thanks to Laura L. Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity writing for Time Magazine‘s June 27, 2016 issue. Entitled, “What millennials already know about growing up,” she highlights findings on the university’s Sightlines Project, including:
- “More than young people in the past, millennials have friends they count on in tough times.
- More millennials have college degrees than do prior generations.
- Millennial poverty is up and employment is down, college debt is more than five times what it was just 20 years ago…
- Both home ownership and participation in retirement savings accounts… are starkly down…
- More than a quarter of millennials report that they could not cover a $3,000 emergency, whether with their own savings or by borrowing from family or friends, and thus live day to day…
- Millennials are less likely to be married or have children than were Gen X-ers or boomers at the same age.”
From this, Carstensen suggests, “But these habits could be the right approach for a generation that could find itself working into their 70s or beyond and perhaps never retiring. Viewed that way, living with parents isn’t a sign of failure but an adaptation to new family structures… If millennials face six decades of work instead of four, and lives that could stretch even longer, leaving home at 18 or even 22 may make little sense.”
Is she onto something? Find her conclusions reassuring or the opposite?