According to a recent study by the Pew Forum, and reported in Forbes Magazine, households which are headed by someone 65 years or older has an average net worth about 47 times larger than a household headed by someone under the age of 35.
“If this pattern continues, it will call into question one of the most basic tenets of the American Dream — the idea that each generation does better than the one that came before,” Paul Taylor, the co-author of the study, told the British newspaper the Daily Mail.
The Pew Forum reported that the older households had an average net worth of $170,494, whereas the net worth of younger households was a meager $3,662.
The gap wasn’t always this large, however. Since 1984, the seniors’ households net worth has grown 42 per cent, but the net worth headed by younger people declined 68 per cent in the last quarter-century.
“The elderly have a comprehensive safety net that most adults, especially young adults, lack,” poverty expert Sheldon Danziger of the University of Michigan told the news source.