Researchers Ask: Are People Better Off Than 50 Years Ago? (marketwatch.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader gollum123 quotes MarketWatch: Are you doing better than the previous generation? The Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., asked nearly 43,000 people in 38 countries around the globe that question this past spring. Residents in 20 countries said people like them were better off than they were 50 years ago. In Vietnam, 88% felt better off, followed by India (69%), South Korea (68%), Japan (65%), Germany (65%), Turkey (65%), the Netherlands (64%), Sweden (64%), Poland (62%) and Spain (60%)...

The U.S. was among the other 18 countries in which people said they were actually worse off than half a century ago. In Senegal, 45% felt this way, followed by Nigeria (54%), Kenya (53%), the U.S. (41%), Ghana (47%), Brazil (49%), France (46%), Hungary (39%), Lebanon (54%) and Peru (46%).
55% of Canadians feel they're better off, while just 45% of people in the U.K. feel the same way, according to the article.

"Venezuela, which has suffered from political unrest and economic turbulence in recent years, was last on the list. Some 72% people there said they felt worse off than 50 years ago."

Comments

On the one hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I have instant access to well-hung Brazilian tranny porn with rosebud action. On the other hand, most of the productivity of technology doesn't seem to translate into less stress, less working hours, or more security for me.

Those who were there vs those who were not

[thinkwaitfast]

73% among those 50 and older say life is better now compared with 59% who say this among 18- to 29-year-olds

Re:Those who were there vs those who were not

[Solandri]

The home ownership rate is higher today than in 1967.

Median home prices are about the same today as they were in 1967 after you adjust for inflation.

Mortgage interest rates are lower today than in 1967.

Median income is up for all quintiles since 1967 after adjusting for inflation, even the bottom two. Meaning the home price to income ratio has fallen since 1967 (you need to use a smaller percentage of your income to afford a home).

I'm sorry for your situation, but you are an outlier. Not representative of the norm. Home ownership is easier today than in 1967.

If you want to know why you Millenials are having a hard time buying a home, the answer is really simple. The savings rate has fallen from 12% in 1967 to about 6% today. Basically, you spent all your money instead of saving it. Contrast this to, say, the UK - where the savings rate has actually gone up since the 1970s. It's not all bad news though. Young people began saving more beginning about a decade ago. Unfortunately, you actually had a negative savings rate from about 1995-2007 (you were spending more than you made). So combine your higher savings rate with paying off your accumulated debt, and you can't afford to rent an apartment so you end up living in your parents' basement.

Re:Those who were there vs those who were not

[AmiMoJo]

In the UK housing is really unaffordable. We don't build enough houses, and older people see them as an asset which means they want to keep prices high.

In top of that, rents are very high too.

Many young people's only chance of owning a home is to wait for a relative to die and leave them some money. This creates a feedback loop where older people want their homes to remain expensive so they have more to pass on to their kids now that house prices are so high.

In top of that, university went from being free about 20 years ago to about 40-50k today. Student loans today are creating a huge black hole of bad debt for the next generation. Many, maybe the majority of students are never going to pay it all back.

So yeah, I wouldn't cite the UK as an example of a good system.

Re:Those who were there vs those who were not

[Anonymous Coward]

You're using an old trick - averaging across multiple populations to hide the divergence.

Home ownership is up. Except below the age of 40 it's down. So really those over 50 have it better, those under 50 much much worse.

Median home prices are about the same. But there are lots of homes in areas that are useless if you want to get a job. Home prices in areas with jobs are up over 500% on their 1967 number.

Mortgage rates are lower. But credit scores for the under 40s are worse, their income is lower.

Income is up. But only for the older generation. Median income for those below 40 is down across the stats.

Take your disingenuous nonsense elsewhere.

Re:Those who were there vs those who were not

[cahuenga]

Real median earnings for males peaked in 1974: https://economix.blogs.nytimes... The reason "household income" is up is because there are far more person/hours being worked per household. Fifty years ago single incomes per household were quite common - Today everyone works.

Hmm, my own case...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Old guy opinion follows:

Assuming I were my current age 50 years ago, I'd be long dead. The fix for my problems weren't even conceived of then. As is, in spite of my previous problems, and in spite of missing several internal organs, I expect I'll survive another 20 years or so (and in so doing, live longer than any of my grandparents managed).

Now, one could argue that being able to make the previous statement to a worldwide audience in almost realtime is a bad thing, but I also happen to think that that's one of the major improvements in life in the last 50 years (Yes, I was born rather before the internet existed).

And other things too numerous to mention. Hell, I was around before cable TV, much less the internet...

Housing costs

[locater16]

The price of the average home has nearly doubled in the US over the last 50 years. Similar in the UK. A large part of the reason for this is that while the efficiency of making almost anything has gone up over time, the efficiency for building construction has actually gone down for many first world countries over the past 50 years. There's any number of reasons. Ever tighter construction standards that have absolutely no unification, a tighter job market with a lot more demand for workers more skilled than what construction will pay, etc. But the biggest are that construction is still a million tiny contractors that can't afford large scale investments, and that the tech for construction hasn't advanced much in 50 years. Someone from decades ago would still recognize most of what a construction worker does today.

For all that robotics is set to change this majorly over the next decade. Brick laying robots and rebar tying ones and etc. will start replacing a lot of construction work. But it doesn't help this very moment. Shelter is the other half of that "food and" for basics a person anywhere would hope to have. And having soaring housing costs all over the place isn't helping. Anyone hoping to get elected in the US or UK soonish would do well to tell people they'll do something about it, even though they can't actually do much.

Re:Housing costs

[Tablizer]

The actual cost of the building is secondary to many other issues. Many communities actually don't want to make it easy to build new dwellings because they don't want traffic, immigrants, and change in general: for good or bad, people don't like change.

And the local gov't finds that they get more tax revenue if new houses cater to the wealthy, and therefore don't even try to make new housing cheaper. If newbies come in, they want rich newbies.

Venezuela: "political unrest, economic turbulance"

[Nova Express]

Why not come out and mention the real cause of Venezuela's nightmare: Socialism.

Re:Measurement of a Feeling

[LynnwoodRooster]

You act like race riots and political riots don't happen. Or that domestic terrorism doesn't exist.

As far as immigration goes, Miami has a larger percentage of immigrants than San Jose and note that Los Angeles is not very far behind San Jose. And the violent crime rates of Miami and Los Angeles dwarf that of San Jose. San Jose kind of bucks the trends - I think having billions and billions of dollars in "sillycon valley" makes that happen?

Or perhaps it's not the fact they're immigrant, but whether or not those immigrants are here legally? After all, illegal immigrants are about 3.4% of the population but they overwhelmingly commit most of the violent and drug crime in the US.

Or perhaps it has to do with the race of those immigrants? You do realize that 61.4% of all immigrants in San Jose are from Asia, and Asians have some of the lowest crime rates. So maybe the fact your immigrant neighbors are here legally, making big money, and from ethnic backgrounds that for whatever reason have a much lower crime rate, you're in a unique spot and cannot being to extrapolate your experience to nationwide - because it is so different than most of the rest of the US?