“Buying a house today requires a small fortune, and each piece of furniture costs about three times as much as it did ten years ago.” This complaint doesn’t come from a TikTok video or a Substack newsletter – it’s a line in an article published in 1866 in a health magazine called “The Men Won’t Propose.” Hall’s Journal of Healthmore than a century before anyone coined the term “Gen Z.”
The quote opens a new report from the BCG Center for Macroeconomics called “The Kids Are Alright: The Timeless Fear Over Young People and Money.” Economists Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Paul SwartzAnd Henry Rubin argue that the received wisdom about a failing, falling-back generation doesn’t survive contact with the data: In their estimation, Generation Z is richer at the same age than Millennials, Generation X, or Baby Boomers ever were.
Generation Z feels worse about money than any generation before. A generation that thrives on every important number and is still unhappy is the kind of contradiction on which Charles Dickens built his career.
The best of times, the worst of times
We all know the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of folly, it was the age of faith, it was the age of unbelief, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
According to Carlsson-Szlezak, the company’s chief global economist, this is more or less the shape of the BCG data. Much of his work is devoted to combating these persistent misperceptions of economic facts; its 2024 Shocks, crises and false alarmsco-authored with Paul Swartz, did that Financial Times‘ list of the best business books of the year, arguing, among other things, that narratives can be exaggerated and that fundamentals are always a better guide. “The all-too-common narratives of economic collapse and decline are often false alarms themselves,” the authors write of their approach—much like their take on Generation Z’s Dickensian paradox.
“I have compassion for Generation Z,” Carlsson-Szlezak said Assets by email. “They were the guinea pigs of the smartphone revolution and had little help from parents and educators to develop effective filters to distinguish TikTok from IRL.”
But at the same time, the facts don’t lie.
In terms of income, Generation Z has built the largest generational lead since the Baby Boomers: The oldest Generation Z workers earn an average of $42,000 in constant dollars at age 28 – 25% more than Millennials at that age and 50% more than Baby Boomers.
When it comes to wealth, BCG says that Generation Z, on its own, is too young for meaningful comparisons. However, when combined with Millennials, the report suggests that today’s youth have overtaken generations before. Millennials aged 34 have an average net worth of $331,000, compared to $251,000 for Generation X and $229,000 for Baby Boomers at the same age.
The mood has moved in the opposite direction. For the first four decades that pollsters have been tracking the question, older Americans certainly viewed the economy more bleakly than younger Americans, a pattern that continued from at least 1980 through 2025. For the first time since records began, young Americans are more pessimistic than their elders. A new SoFi/YouGov survey of 4,090 U.S. adults lands on the same fault line: 62% of Gen Z and Millennials still aspire to a comfortable retirement, but only 46% believe they actually will. The SoFi report argues that Gen Z is “financemaxxing” and “lifemaxxing,” looking beyond financial returns to “emotional ROI” of how far their money can go. The survey data confirms much of BCG’s argument: Generation Z has high expectations and seems to overlook how well they are actually doing.
The BCG authors back up their own thesis. “Our analysis of generational progress is not a claim that everything is fine for everyone. Rather, it is a rejection of the superficial claim that everything is wrong,” the report says. Student debt is real; City apartments are actually more expensive; Some in this generation will not earn more than their parents, as every generation before them did not.
“Gen Z and Millennials are experiencing their own unique intergenerational struggles for careers, income, and wealth—and they face unique challenges such as student debt and housing affordability,” the authors write, before concluding that “they are nonetheless making broad generational progress.”
Hard times and whether they are structural
The report’s sharpest refutation is directed at the narrative of the “K-shaped economy” – the idea that the rich are retreating while everyone else is falling behind. The authors find that wage growth in the bottom quartile has exceeded the top quartile in almost every year since 2020, and wealth gains have been roughly proportional across income quintiles.
And according to SoFi, 77% of Gen Z believe they can start a business compared to 58% of older generations, and Gen Z is four times more likely to have invested in crypto than baby boomers (26% vs. 6%). Likewise, young people hold a larger proportion of their wealth in stocks, but this makes them more vulnerable to market fluctuations.
“Greater equity exposure actually increases the risk that Generation Z will cyclically underperform in a bear market,” Carlsson-Szlezak said, pointing to the dent that the 2008 financial crisis left in the wealth curves of Generation X and Boomers. But he argues that the long-term bet still favors the youth because “expected stock returns outperform most other asset classes” – and real estate, he notes, was not immune to setbacks in the 2000s and 2010s.
In one Empower Survey 2024 Quoted by BCG, Generation Z said they need to earn $600,000 a year to feel financially successful – the 99th percentile of U.S. income, compared to the $100,000 limit set by Boomers themselves. The average full-time salary is around $60,000.
The authors call this gap “Financial dysmorphia“, driven in part by the presence of unrepresentative wealth on social media. Still, they argue that financial dysmorphia should not take root and misperceptions of economic facts should continue: “As young people reach adulthood, they have a responsibility to use effective filters to block out digital bling and focus on the reality in front of them.”
Housing and Dickens
Housing is the report’s most detailed finding and the only place where the “children are doing well” thesis encounters real tension. Today it takes nearly six years of average income to buy a home at an average price, up from three and a half in 1975—but the average new home is also 50% larger, and affordability by square foot has barely changed. The real hurdle, the authors say, is that 90% of young people today live in cities and suburbs and are looking for housing that isn’t being built fast enough.
Carlsson-Szlezak argued that the preference is temporary rather than permanent: “This preference peaks in the mid-to-late 20s and a migration to the suburbs occurs. By age 42, many Millennials have moved to the suburbs, and that’s exactly when they catch up with Generation X in home ownership rates.”
Dickens knew something about the gap between wealth and a roof over your head. His father was imprisoned In 1824, forced to pay off his debts, 12-year-old Charles was put to work 10 hours a day putting labels on boot polish jars – a disgrace he told almost no one about for the rest of his life. His grandmother’s death left the family with a small inheritance, enough to pay off the debts. It’s more or less the plot of Great expectationswhose hero Pip inherited a mysterious fortune, assumed it made him great, and spent the second half of the novel ashamed of the family that raised him. Dickens did not approve of this possibly autobiographical deception: the novel rewards Joe Gargery’s simple decency over Pip’s exaggerated pretensions.
David Copperfield, the hero of Dickens’ personal favorite of his novelsis a more Boomer-coded anti-Pip: an orphan who rises out of poverty through work, patience and a stubborn bond with the people who have been kind to him along the way, not through a windfall he doesn’t deserve. Where Pip’s fortune arrives at random and corrupts him, David’s fortune arrives gradually and leaves him more or less intact. It is the difference between a life built and a life inherited.
A journey, not a judgement
BCG itself argues that the boomer boom was a fluke – but boomers remain the report’s baseline. “Boomers are the base of comparison, both culturally and scientifically,” says Carlsson-Szlezak, pointing out that they are the only generation with a complete data lifecycle. The deeper point concerns the size of the bar: “In terms of income growth or wealth accumulation, Generation Z can beat the Boomers. But it is unlikely that Generation Z will beat Generation
Carlsson-Szlezak acknowledged that boomer prosperity cannot return. “What is not repeatable is the transition from single-income households to dual-income households,” he said, pointing to the mass entry of women into the workforce — a once-in-a-lifetime shift that, by definition, cannot happen twice. He points to a second, less obvious advantage: the boomer generation they were competing with. The Silent Generation of the Great Depression, whose economic scars set a historically low bar for the baby boomers.
Carlsson-Szlezak does not believe the gap will be easily closed. His more specific hope is generational: “The current generation of teenagers is being weaned off their smartphones, at least during school years. Perhaps the peak of financial dysmorphia is behind us.” A better understanding of history, including an appreciation of progress, would also help, he adds.
Asked which explanation carries the most weight – psychology, a flawed measure or economic structure – Carlsson-Szlezak replied: “Nothing is ever monocausal, but the biggest challenge, in my view, is distorted expectations.” And what does he think Charles would say to all these misplaced great expectations? “I think Dickens would look at Generation Z and say they should aspire to be David but choose to be Pip.”