For the first time in a long time, we’re setting up a generation to be worse off than the one before it

Kate Griffiths and Danielle Wood write in The Conversation (18.8.19) about their new Grattan Institute report on intergenerational inequality in Australia, suggesting that young Australians are no better off than those who came before, and are likely to do worse.

‘We’ve become used to each new generation of Australians enjoying a better standard of living than the one that came before it. Until now. Today’s young Australians are in danger of falling behind.

‘A new Grattan Institute report, Generation gap: ensuring a fair go for younger Australians, reveals that younger generations are not making the same economic gains as their predecessors.

‘Economic growth has been slow for a decade, Australia’s population is ageing, and climate change looms. The burden of these changes mainly falls on the young. The pressures have emerged partly because of economic and demographic changes, but also because of the policy choices we’ve made as a nation.

‘For much of the past century, strong economic growth has produced growing wealth and incomes. Older Australians today have substantially greater wealth, income and expenditure compared with Australians of the same age decades earlier.

‘But … younger Australians have not made the same progress.’

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