Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and Divisive

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and Divisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War
Those gunning for Social Security are already using the study to divide the "other 99 percent."

November 7, 2011 |


A new study purporting to show that older households are doing much better than younger ones in terms of wealth and income threatens to spark an intergenerational class war, pitting Americans of different ages – people who have all been devastated by the crash caused by Wall Street's recklessness -- against one another. But there are serious flaws in how the research is being interpreted.

The analysis, by Pew Research, is being spun as evidence that the government “spends too much” on the elderly while leaving younger Americans hanging out to dry. It's already becoming another weapon in the corporate right's long-running battle against Social Security.

There's no doubt that this economy is especially grim for young people. Unemployment among young adults continues to hover around 18 percent, and a report by the Federal Reserve found that full-time undergraduate students are borrowing 63 percent more for school than they did a decade ago. (Outstanding student-loan debt broke the trillion-dollar mark for the first time this year.) Young people have few prospects for decent jobs. This bleak situation is clearly a driving factor behind the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement; studies suggest that the “occupiers” skew young, don't have a lot of income and suffer from a much higher rate of unemployment than the country as a whole.

The Pew study's main finding is that, “in 2009, households headed by adults ages 65 and older possessed 42% more median net worth (assets minus debt)" than they did in 1984, but that trend was reversed in younger households. In 2009, “households headed by adults younger than 35 had 68% less wealth than households of their same-aged counterparts had in 1984." .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/153012/pew_report_on_young-old_wealth_gap_is_misleading_and_divisive%3B_could_fuel_intergenerational_class_war/

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[madrchsod]

2. anyone with a functioning brain knows that study was bullshit

yup...old people like me can pay for my retirement and health care cause i am rolling in the hay...


well i could have but.....

my SKILLS were SOLD to the LOWEST wage workers across the world.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. Those over 65 were able to buy homes and pay off mortgages

And those free-and-clear properties are the majority of their "wealth."

Subtract owner-occupied real estate from those numbers and see what happens to the disparity. Then look also at the amount of wealth that has been liquidated as those nearing what used to be called retirement age are pushed out of jobs and have to rely on savings and accumulated assets just to get by, when health care costs are rising and insurance :grr: disappears with the job.

TG

[dkf]

4. That doesn't get over the fact that the young people paying for the elderly are in worse shape.

Pretty desperate in fact.

Can the young afford to pay for all this? What is their breaking point?

[Tansy_Gold]

5. Right. Right. And the elderly never contributed anything to the

"young" and are now contributing nothing to their own maintenance.

You'd think the "elderly" were all a bunch of senile old whiners begging to be accommodated in luxury during their "golden" years and demanding that the "young" sacrifice themselves to keep the old geezers going.

How many of those geezers helped put those kids through school and college, taught them to drive, gave them cars, helped them out when they were just starting?
How many of them would gladly, eagerly do so again if they could?

I'm really fucking sorry that the Wall Street bastards made it tough for you, dkf, but I guess people like you won't be happy until everyone over 50 who isn't productive (by your standards) just jumps over a cliff and takes themselves out of your misery. It's almost as if you're blaming us for the problem!

You're a prime example of the kind of divide this "research" is aiming to create. Instead of recognizing that we're all in this together, we're all responsible for each other, you'd throw out the social security that a lot of us worked our asses off for so you and your ilk can buy the latest cool new electronic device made in China by the people who took your jobs away from you. And I'm not talking about Chinese workers -- I'm talking about the CEOs who are the ones who REALLY stole your jobs, the CEOs and the stockholders and the government that allowed it all to happen.

what's your breaking point? I don't know. I guess the breaking point of us seniors -- I just turned 63, fyi -- is now and we should just die so you don't have anything to worry about. Never mind that our deaths won't bring back your jobs.

You've fallen for the scapegoating propaganda of the right. Rather than look at the real villains, you look for anyone convenient to blame and the right wing has provided you with a perfect target for your anger: old folks.

Just remember, one of these days, maybe, you'll be "old," too, and I hope no one comes along who is as eager to push you onto an ice floe (if there are any left) as you seem to be with your elders.

Edited to add, because I forgot part of my point -- You think the young are in "worse shape" than the elderly. How many young people do you see in nursing homes, alone, without friends or family to help out? How many young people starve to death or freeze to death because they can't pay the bills? How many young people have prescription drug bills that run into the hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month? You think Medicare and Medicaid cover every cent of that? Ha! how little you know.

and remember too that many of these seniors have been productive all their lives and now their value as contributors to the social fabric has been tossed aside as useless and valueless. They don't have the opportunities to change careers, to examine their future. And frankly, it sticks in my craw that young people, who have their youth and their health and their opportunities and their choices all ahead of them would whine and piss and moan because their parents and grandparents are only asking to have what they earned.

"Seniors" aren't asking to be kept in luxury. Many of us worked damn hard for what we have, and it's not that we're asking for more -- we're just asking to be able to hang onto what we acquired AND help the next generation do a little better. We aren't your enemy, dkf, but we sure won't be your friends if you keep whining and blaming us for the troubles that are affecting us all.




TG

[dkf]

6. I'm not concerned about me. I feel bad for the kids.

That has always been what alarmed me, what the younger generation will be stuck with.

The baby boomers left us in a mess. I'm gen X, and I feel partly to blame too. But you won't see me screaming to keep my benefits. I'll be happy if I get anything, but I will understand if the kids don't feel obligated to fund ever increasing benefits too because I don't think it is fair.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. WE DID NOT LEAVE YOU WITH A MESS

Get over yourself.

[dkf]

9. Kind of looks like one to me.

What they over funded in social security they underfunded in income taxes and then they blew a hole in the deficit.

I'd say the boomers benefited from that a lot more than gen x.

[jeff47]

16. Your generation voted to make a mess.

Over and over again, your generation voted for Reganomics over the New Deal. Not all of you, but a majority.

Well, that bird's come home to roost. And there's a mess. Now, we can either spend time bickering about who voted for what 20 years ago, or we can use this as a lesson that kills Reganomics for good.

So...you wanna complain about how we're not treating your generation with adequate reverence, or should we work together to reverse that trend and fix the problem?

[KoKo]

19. You are blaming "a generation" rather than politicians, Wall Street and the

Military Industrial interests of this country for the problems we face today. Lumping people together with the term "generation" you know is just a "Special Interest" talking point.

The problems we face are all of our generations to deal with. When you see senior citizens out there at Occupy Wall Street (some in wheel chairs) and fighting to stop more environmental degradation at the "Ring Around the White House" Tar Sands protest and indeed at all the protests trying to stop the Iraq Invasion and the protests afterwards trying to end the invasion...you have to realize that we are all in this together.

It's the RW and Wall Street that want you to think that "old people" are stealing money from the young. Wall Street wants that SS Money to go into 401-K's. They are getting desperate for more money since they've brought the economy down with their financial schemes. It's not enough to take tax payer and small investors money...they want it ALL...including whatever you make in your lifetime.

[hobbit709]

21. Still spouting the talking points.

[jeff47]

7. It's amusing to watch baby boomers freak out about this study

As a group, they're the ones who ushered in the 'race to the bottom' with wages, they voted en-masse for the politicians fighting "welfare queens", and demanded tax cuts instead of safety nets. So of course they're doing better financially than younger people - they caught the tail end of good, high paying jobs and then boomers who got into management wrecked the place. So get out your pitchforks!! Right?

The problem isn't "boomers" as a whole. It's the ones who embraced supply-side economics and have spent the last 30 years voting for it. Resulting in policies favoring the 1% at the expense of everyone else. But that has nothing to do with their age. They happened to be the ones of voting age when the conservative revolution happened.

Yes, some are going to try to use this study to try and drive a wedge between young and old. Instead of railing against that, use the study for what it does show: Decades of catering to the 1% has not worked. The boomers are the "control" group in this study, and the young are showing the results of decades of conservative policies.

The liberal/New Deal system resulted in wealth growing. The conservative system has resulted in wealth plummeting. Stop talking about the young/old divide, and instead talk about the New Deal versus Reaganomics. Growing up with liberal policies results in 42% more wealth. Growing up with conservative policies results in 68% less wealth. And you've got a study backing up that assertion.

Plugging your ears and saying "NO!! THE STUDY MUST BE WRONG!!!" is just as divisive as using the study to attack the boomers. Sweeping the study under the rug ignores the very real difficulties of "the kids these days". And as a "Generation-X" person, I assure you that ignoring the concerns of the kids is really not going to help. It will create another massively cynical generation.

[sinkingfeeling]

12. I'm not freaked out by the study at all, but you and others here seem to have latched on to it

wholeheartedly. I am a boomer and yes, I have acquired lots of 'things' throughout my 45 years in the work force. I have a net worth about 7 times the average listed in the article. I have a pension (reduced by the Board of Directors by $600 a month) that I worked 30 years for. I have not only my own home, but bought one for my 40 year old son and his 32 year old wife. Both of them are in college, trying to improve their chances of being able to find a good job. And I am paying their expenses while they do so. I bought their cars, pay their life and car insurance, pay their utilities and their mortgage.

Of course, the study is correct! I can also look back at when I was 25 to 30 years old. I didn't have a fraction of the 'wealth' I have today. It's always been that way. I have a journal from my mother, written in 1939, the first year she and my dad were married. She documented every expense they had and their income. You can't believe the prices of bread, oleo, milk, eggs, etc. nor can you believe their yearly wages! Yet, they too ended up having a net worth of several hundred thousand dollars.

[jeff47]

15. You are utterly misunderstanding the study.

"I can also look back at when I was 25 to 30 years old. I didn't have a fraction of the 'wealth' I have today."

That's not what the study was comparing.

People 65+ in 1984 vs 65+ in 2011: 2011 has more wealth. That's not 2011 65-year-olds compared to their younger selves. It's 65+ in both measures.

You are in the 1984 35- group, but not in the 2011 35- group. And in 1984, you had 68% more wealth than today's 35-.

It's not comparing one person through their own lifetime. It's comparing young-to-young, and old-to-old.

[zalinda]

22. Did they include CEO's in this study?

I would hazard a guess that CEO's are mostly in the 65+ group. And so looking at what CEO's got paid in 1984 and what they are paid now, would skew the results of the study. What were houses worth in 1984 and what are they worth now? I would guess that if you took out the top 1% earners, the stats would look quite differently.

zalinda

[Alcibiades]

10. Sorry, but no

While the Pew report has its problems, this is a trend I noticed 20 years ago in college, when I was young myself. Whether you look at wealth or income, the results are the same: everyone who is not rich has been screwed, but the young have been hit especially hard.

"Another, longer-term factor in younger families' lack of wealth, note the authors, is that people are waiting longer to get married and are starting their careers later – “two markers of adulthood traditionally linked to income growth and wealth accumulation.”

Actually, this gets the causality exactly wrong: young people are not not getting rich because they are delaying family formation, they are delaying family formation because they don't have the money to support a family.

The peak year for income of men withoiut a college education was 1979: it's gone down ever since. Many of the jobs young earners would have had are gone, and now they must work in the service sector, where they earn much less.

Plus, income is "sticky." The more an individual earner makes when he or she enters the job market, the more they will earn for the resto of their lifetimes. Thus, the state of the economy at the time you start working has a lasting effect over the lifespan, and this effect is robust and well documented. It even continues into retirement, as pensions, social security and whatever else you manage to set aside are dependent on your income during your working years.

Maybe Pew didn't get it quite right, but Alternet didn't get it quite right, either. The elderly are represented much better in D.C. than the young, which is why programs for the elderly are the "third rail" of politics, and programs that help young people are the first to get the axe. The real driver here isn't social security or medicare or anything else: it's a lack of economic oipportunity for young people. This is important because these are the folks who will rear the next generation, or not.

[dkf]

11. It's not only the lack of opportunity for young people but also how much of that sad income will

go towards supporting their elders and how much that leaves to support their kids. The entitlement taxes are regressive as they are paid from the first dollar. Increasing taxes to keep trust funds solvent will be a significant piece of their wages.

[Alcibiades]

13. Even the proposed cuts to Social Security will hit the young

hardest. The most draconian cut proposed has been the adoption of a chained CPI, which will decrease the benefits to workers retiring later much more than it will hurt current retirees. You're right about the regressive nature of the current system: the one social security tax increase that would help the progessivity of the system would be lifting the cap on earned income taxable, but you don't hear so much about that proposal any more.

From what I've seen, the truth of the matter is that the older generation has had to support the younger one more than vice versa. The government collects FICA from people who are still in their earning years and pays benefits to benefitiaries, whose own payments were stolen from the trust fund beginning in the Reagan years. These folks then have to turn around and help out their kids and grandkids, not because the tax burden on young people is so high, but because all the high value added jobs have been offshored, because of student loan debt, because wages have not kept up with the cost of raising a family, and because the young were hit hardest by the housing market crash ginned up by Wall Street.

[Democrats_win]

14. If George W. Bush had never been president, we'd all be better off.

It's not how much the old people have--which they might need as they end up with old-age medical issues--it's how the MBA Republican president mismanaged our nation into a mess that left the young without any good prospects.

[midnight]

17. K&R Division is their calling card...

Our Wisconsin legislature introduces divisive bills that make the middle class and the poor fight over the same pot of money for school...

[Wolf Frankula]

18. It Was Designed to Be So.

I was in polling and market research for many years. Except for simple A,B,C,D. preference polls, EVERY poll and survey is designed with an object in view. Some are designed to float or sink an idea in a company, some are designed to plant an idea in the public mind (This is one.) Some are designed just to make a headline. But ALL are designed with an ulterior motive, not to get the truth People who commission polls and surveys don't want to hear the truth, they can't handle it.

Wolf

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Since it wasn't a poll, your points are irrelevant

It was an analysis of government data. What it said was true (to anyone who doesn't think all government data is part of a One World Government conspiracy, anyway). The question is whether it's important.

[Gormy Cuss]

23. Nope. Do not confuse market research with applied social science research.

You have accurately described the goal of push polls and market research. The former has the goal of influencing opinion, the latter has the goal of gathering intelligence on public perceptions of products or services with the goal of honing the way the product is designed, packaged, advertised, and priced.

Social science researchers, with the exception of the partisan shills who violate all standards of the business, strive to measure and describe trends and opinions within and across demographic groups with a view towards minimizing bias by using accepted tools for that purpose. The Pew Research Center is one such social science research organization. Having said that, it doesn't mean that their research can be presumed to be without flaws. For example, Dean Baker's criticism that the Pew report did not address the switch from defined benefit pensions to 401Ks as a factor in the wealth ratio difference is something that the report authors should -- and probably will-- address.