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Have young people never had it so bad?
By Tom de Castella
BBC News Magazine
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Rising wages and low house prices helped the baby boom generation to prosper. Today's young face high unemployment, expensive education, and a lifetime of renting. Have they never had it so bad? Let's take a typical 24-year-old everyperson. This person lives in Nottingham.There's a one-bedroom flat they want but it costs ?120,000. You need a salary of more than ?25,000 to get a mortgage for that.But this everyperson has no salary. They're one of the . Our 24-year-old has a degree and a ?25,000 debt to pay off from university. The everyperson has moved back in with their parents, part of the .
A job is the most pressing requirement but many of those are now going to older workers. The over-50s accounted for 93% of the job increases over the last decade, according to And there's the growing number who put off retiring. Working people of pension age have nearly doubled over the last two decades, reaching 1.4 million in 2011, according to the Office for National Statistics.In 1957 Harold Macmillan declared: "Most of our people have never had it so good." Today no politician would utter those words.Yet there's a growing belief that the generation of baby boomers born in the two decades before 1965 were lucky to live when they did. Houses were easier to come by when young and rocketed in value. Pensions were generous. Unemployment was mostly low. Now, aged between 50 and 70, they have had it pretty good. The question for today's young might be, have they ever had it so bad?
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Boom time: A sharp increase in births after World War II created the baby boomer generation, born into an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.
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Roll with it: Babies born between 1948 and 1964 entered an age of such stability that they have subsequently been described by some as self indulgent.
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As teenagers in the 60s, baby boomers could look forward to jobs for life and plenty of disposable income. Did this foster an early sense of entitlement?
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The 80s saw the last of the baby boomers grow up and go to work. It was the era of Wall Street, the "big bang" in the City and rocketing house prices.
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Tony Blair and Bill Clinton: Archetypal baby boomers who grew up to rule their respective nations in the 1990s and 2000s.
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Many baby boomers now enjoy a lifestyle that the younger generation can only dream of. They are also working longer and, some say, blocking jobs.
There have been eras indisputably worse. A whole generation went to war in 1914 and 1939. There was the hunger and unemployment of the Great Depression. And child labour in Victorian times.But take 1963, the year that marked the end of national service and the rise of the Beatles, and you have an interesting cut-off point for comparison. Is 2013 the hardest time for young people in the last 50 years?Today, for the first time, a person in their 80s has higher living standards than someone working in their 20s, the .
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Protest against rising fees and youth unemployment
A student who started university in 2011 will
and bleak career prospects. And even the lucky ones who get good jobs face a lifetime of renting, unless the "Bank of Mum and Dad" is willing and liquid enough to help out.Baby boomers born in the 1940s to mid 60s bought their first home when prices were low and watched property prices shoot up as house-building slowed while the population rose. There was relatively low unemployment up to the 1980s and again in the 1990s and 2000s. Wages rose. Low inflation and globalisation kept prices down. They got generous pensions. There was poverty too, but those middle and top earners flourished. They are the lucky generation. So goes the theory.It's not just young agitators saying this. In 2010, Conservative frontbencher David Willetts, born in the late 1950s, tackled the subject in his book The Pinch. It is subtitled "How the baby boomers took their children's future - and why they should give it back."
Willetts pointed out the crucial role of demography.When births spiked after the war, it was thought this new generation would struggle due to the competition for jobs and resources. But the reverse turned out to be true. Being a big generation meant faster economic growth and more lobbying power. "Our slice of the pie might be smaller but the pie will grow faster than in the lifetimes of other cohorts," Willetts explained.
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Unemployed young people re-encted the Jarrow Crusade in 2011...
And the baby boomers are living longer, creating an imbalance between workers and retired. It means our putative 24-year-old faces a future of a small working population supporting a large number of elderly people.By 2035 it is projected that those aged 65 and over will account for , up from 15% in 1985.Despite austerity, the state pension has been bolstered, winter fuel payments are outside the reach of means testing, and free bus pass and TV licence retained for the elderly. At the same time the government
has cut benefits in real terms and axed the Education Maintenance Allowance in England.
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... 75 years after Tyneside's unemployed shipyard workers marched on London
Pensioners have traditionally been portrayed as vulnerable or deserving. But it is time for a rethink, campaigners say. In October 2011, a new group, the Intergenerational Foundation,
and should be encouraged to downsize. "Older generations own more than two-thirds of the nation's housing stock," says Angus Hanton co-founder of the foundation. "They have rewarded themselves with unaffordable pensions and intimidate policy makers through sheer cohort size and lobby-power."
One solution is to free up family housing by offering elderly people tax breaks to move into smaller homes. The Intergenerational Foundation says more than a third of the housing stock is under-occupied, which means at least two spare bedrooms.
TV property show presenter Kirstie Allsopp says it is not fair to pick on the elderly as they usually want to hang on to their homes for their children's sake.
"It's not house hoarding. This is their home," she says. "A lot of that generation have done far more in life and taken far less than we have."
It's dangerous and misleading to talk this way, argues Dot Gibson, general secretary of the National Pensioners Convention. Poverty rates amongst the under-25s and the over-65s both stand at 20%. There are also many shared concerns between young and old such as a lack of suitable housing, she says. "What this artificial generational conflict fails to recognise is that different generations are already helping out each other inside the family - whereas the real division in our society is between rich and poor." Gibson alludes to the unofficial redistribution of wealth of parents helping children with their mortgage. But a report for the Resolution Foundation
argued that while bequests like this will play a role, many elderly people may consume their wealth rather than passing it on, especially for long-term care."Given that it is lower-income pensioners who are most likely to need to draw down their housing equity in this way, we might expect their [often] lower-income families to be less likely to benefit from inheritance," the report predicted.It comes down to fairness, says James Sefton, professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, who has done economic forecasts at the Treasury. Government debt is stacking up for the young. Meanwhile those born 1945-65 have lived through times of unprecedented plenty."If you think about the baby boom generation they lived through peace and unparalleled prosperity. You'd struggle to explain why that generation should be able to leave huge debts to the next generation."
Sophie Leonard, producer of BBC Three's People Like Us, filmed in Manchester:
In 2004, Harpurhey in Manchester was labelled the most deprived neighbourhood in England after scoring lowest in an Indices of Deprivation report. Things have definitely improved, but 50% of adults there have no GCSEs or higher qualifications and it is still considered a high crime area.
But what is life really like behind the headlines and government statistics?
Life can indeed be tough for the young residents, but it's simplistic to assume that this is the experience of everyone in the area.
Many of the people we met were resilient, resourceful and ambitious young people determined to make the most of their lives, or turn difficult pasts around - from 20-something entrepreneurs who had set up their own businesses, to aspiring dance teachers and single mums committed to giving their kids happier childhoods than their own.
And they were often doing so with captivating wit and enthusiasm.
So why are the young not taking to the streets?They're too busy trying to get by, argues Caroline Mortimer, a recent graduate. "We're aware of the problems of an ageing population. But we can't think about pensions and buying houses because we've got to get an actual job and pay the rent." She argues that the notion of "respecting your elders" may also have blunted the desire to take on the baby boomers. And there's still an attitude that young people are "ungrateful", she believes. "Older people are worried about their own children but not other people's kids."And, of course, while the economic situation may look grim, young people do have some advantages over previous generations. Their world has opened up massively. Expectations are that young people will start work and settle down later. This leaves them free to travel and the costs are much lower than 50 or even 30 years ago. A return flight to Johannesburg . By 2008 it was ?505, which allowing for inflation was a massive reduction in real terms. A return to Sydney was ?716. In 2008 it was ?699. Then there's the field of consumer electronics. In the 1970s and 1980s buying a television was expensive. Having access to entertainment and information was limited. Computers were exotic and pricey. And that was before you could even go online. "I remember buying my first computer in about 1984," says technology writer Jonathan Margolis. "It was an Amstrad 9512 and cost ?400 in Dixons. It was about 6 weeks' wages and considered a huge bargain." Now you can pick up a laptop for as little as ?100. Today nearly all a person's entertainment needs can be found on something that didn't exist 30 years ago - the mobile phone.But these blandishments may be seen as inadequate compensation for the economic hardships. And baby boomers get the same gadgets and cheap travel.The generational squeeze hasn't hit home yet, says Sefton. But it's coming. The solution may be for the better off in that generation taking over responsibility for their own health and social care, he argues. Rich countries - Norway, South Korea, Singapore - have
to provide for future generations.You could argue this is just boom and bust writ large. The economy grows, baby booms happen. You can't penalise a generation that was lucky. Willetts, who is now the Universities Minister, disagrees. Demography makes it too big a gap. "When you look at the hard financial facts of the houses we own and the pensions we've built up, it's a big challenge to the baby boomer generation to which I belong." You can follow the Magazine on
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Top Stories特别是21到34岁的年轻男人，他们比女人更加渴望婚姻。
Particularly young men, age 21 to 34, are more eager to marry than women are.
但是，如果将青少年的一些特殊身份外延至20多岁的年轻人身上会产生什么样的后果呢？
But what would it look like to extend some of the special status of adolescents to young people in their 20s?
“对于20到24岁的年轻一代来说，这是我们第一次经历这样的萧条。”拉脱维亚总统扎特莱尔斯说。
For the young generation, aged 20 to 24, this is the first time we’ve had this, ” said Valdis Zatlers, Latvia’s president.
现在，他是个十几岁的年轻人了，带着这个年龄段特有叛逆性格和赖脾气，但是，我倒愿意这样认为：总的来说，只要他必须做的，他都会再去做。
He is a teenager, with the rebellions and feistiness characteristic of that age, but I like to think that, on balance, Henry would do it again, if he had to.
她说，该国约有三分之一15-24岁的年轻人失业，这一比例是该国成人失业率的两倍。
Nearly a third of young people aged 15-24 are unemployed – double the unemployment rate for adults in the country, she says.
在街上，有像拉皮条那样引人上钩的十五岁的年轻人，还有更年轻的女孩子们，他们为了要买毒品，最后通常都会被拉皮条的弄去卖淫。
On the streets are hookers as young as fifteen and younger these girls end up being sold for drugs by pimps to street walking to pay for drug addiction.
这本书的目标读者群是8到12岁的年轻读者，将会在明年夏天发行。
The book, which targets young readers ages 8 to 12, will be released next summer.
证据显示很多当地年轻人成了暴徒，不过一位大约20岁的年轻女士哭喊着：“你们在干什么啊？
Amid evidence that locals were turning against the rioters, one young woman, aged about 20, was in tears, shouting: "What are you doing?
家庭观念的变化主要是由18岁到29岁的年轻人带动的。相比往代人，这些人父母未婚或离婚的更多，处于这种情况的朋友也更多。
The changing views of family are being driven largely by young adults 18-29, who are more likely than older generations to have an unmarried or divorced parent or have friends who do.
即使这些20多岁的年轻人成功了，现实却是，绝大多数创业者，不论年龄多大，都与成功无缘。
Even if these 20-somethings pulled it off, the reality is a vast majority of entrepreneurs, of any age, don't succeed.
在新近感染艾滋病的人群中，约有半数是儿童和不满25岁的年轻人。
Around half of all new HIV infections are in children and young people under 25.
然而尽管有许多意想不到的困难，至少如目前的经济低迷，但越来越多的青少年和20来岁的年轻人想自己当老板。
Yet despite the many pitfalls -- least of which is the current economic downturn -- a growing number of tweens, teenagers, and 20-somethings want to be their own boss.
一些纺织和电子产品公司只雇用20多岁的年轻妇女，因为她们被认为较少地制造麻烦并更愿意长时间工作。
Many textile and electronics firms hire only young women in their 20s, as they are thought to be less troublesome and more willing to work long hours.
即便如此，47%的人承认星期五会在电视上观看婚礼，包括绝大多数妇女和18岁到24岁的年轻人。
Even so, 47% agree they will probably watch it on television this Friday, including a majority of women and people aged 18-24.
在一个生日聚会上，屏幕上的小丑动画令一群20多岁的年轻人大笑起来。
At a birthday party, the clown animations made even a group of people in their 20s laugh.
这是一个巨大的诱惑，特别是在20岁的年轻人当中，你不会去想自己致命的可能性这种问题
It’s a big temptation, especially among young people who, when you’re 20, you’re not thinking about your own mortality.
尽管这是一部动画片，但很多像我一样的成年人还是很喜欢它。” 一位25岁的年轻人看完午夜首映场后说。
In spite of being a cartoon, it is still loved by many adults like me, " said the 25-year-old after watching the first show at midnight.
但对于刚迈入20岁和20多岁的年轻人来说，所有的债务貌似激发了他们的自尊心，可能因为他们认为对自己的未来进行了债务投资。
But for people in their early- to mid-20s, all that debt actually seems to boost their self-esteem—possibly because they consider that debt an investment in their future.
他们想知道为什么来自黎巴嫩的一个20多岁的年轻人能说一口流利的俄语和中文？还有，更重要的是，我在为谁工作？
They wanted to know why a 20-year-old from Lebanon was fluent in Russian and Chinese and, more importantly, who was I working for?
苏格兰目前有337个病例，爱丁堡的卫生官员说30%的病例是年龄在15—24岁的年轻人。
There are 337 cases in Scotland and health officials in Edinburgh said 30% of them were in young adults aged 15-24.
它引导警官找到一位16岁的年轻人，当时他隐身在默西塞德郡利特兰利兹-利物浦运河沿岸的灌木丛中。
It led officers to a 16-year-old youth, who was hiding in bushes alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, in Litherland, Merseyside.
来自国家统计局的数据显示，去年16至24岁的年轻人中，在这类网站上发布信息的人占到了75%。
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that last year among 16 to 24-year-olds 75% posted messages on them..
来自国家统计局的数据显示，去年16至24岁的年轻人中，在这类网站上发布信息的人占到了75%。
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that last year among 16 to 24-year-olds 75% posted messages on them..
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