Why Young Folks Aren't As Wealthy As Their Parents Were

A recent Urban Institute study mulled over the implications of the fact that today's under-40s have less wealth than their parents' generation did at the same age. It appears that the story can be boiled down to two factors.

The first cause of the drop in wealth for younger Americans is that most people buy their first home sometime in their early 30s. Of course, the timing wasn't going for the cohort of 30-somethings who bought their first house in the mid-2000s:

And this comes after they'd racked up unprecedented levels of student debt in their 20s:

The Urban Institute folks reach the same conclusion as Allison Schrager did: policy needs to be shifted to make non-retirement saving easier for young Americans.