How Old Are You If You Were Born In 1981

Assumptions & Individualization In order to generate the diagram there were assumptions made based on statistical averages. Please individualize the data (the information) according to your personal situation.

By comparing different Obit Times of other planets vs Earth, the system can figure how old you are on other planets. Your age on Mars is because your age on Earth is . Refer to the below table for the complete reference of your age on other planets.

The age calculator is developed based on the Gregorian calendar. Gregorian calendar is the international civil calendar. Several countries have their own calendars but they still use the Gregorian for administrative purposes. The calendar has 12 months (from January to December) in total with 365 days for a common year and 366 days for a leap year. At the time when you are making Matrimony Match – When you go for matrimony match, then also you need to know specific age of yours so that specific match can be made and the result of the match can be obtained for a better prospect of matrimonial purpose. Age Calculator is nothing but a very useful tool, so many times as well as so many places We need this to caluclator our exact age. that’s why i created this simple age calculator tool which can calculate your age in exact years, days, hours, minutes and seconds accurately with some intresting facts about You.When filing a Competitive Exam – Some government exams need exact age to check whether they qualify to appear in the exams or not as some exams have age limitations.

When sitting with an Astrologer – I am sure, you must have visited an astrologer at the least once in your life, if not to check it go and visit an astrologer today itself, the first thing he will ask you is “What is your exact age?” In case you do not know it accurately the next statement will come “Giving an estimation of an age can change in results of your query if you want we can calculate it for you though it will cost you an additional amount of money”. Now to escape from calculating your age, you prefer giving him some additional money and know the exact results.you only need to enter your date of birth and click on Age calculator button, It’ll return your age in Years, Months, Weeks, Days, Hours, Seconds from that day when you have taken birth on this planet. You can also select From Date, This extra feature will calculate your age from specific date, By default from date will be set on Today’s date, You can set any date even future date as from date and calculate your future age, This feature will be also helpful when you are filling any government form, Where they ask age from specific date.

There are some moments of life which are special, for example when I will be 62, and I want to know how old was I exactly when I got married, then I can simply use the age calculator and find the respective age in seconds, without being frustrated or via consumption of time. You can find out easily with our age calculator what age did you started your first job, basically, things which excite you after some time and thrills you to amazement that you did made an achievement at a young age wherein others of the same age group were still struggling.

Publishers and booksellers observed that the sales of adolescent and young-adult fiction remained strong. This could be because older adults were buying titles intended for younger people, which inflated the market, and because there were fewer readers buying more books.But as their economic prospects improve, most millennials in the United States say they desire marriage, children, and home ownership. Geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan argued that because of the size of the millennial cohort relative to the size of the U.S. population and because they are having children, the United States will continue to maintain an economic advantage over most other developed nations, whose millennial cohorts are not only smaller than their those of their elders but are also not having as high a fertility rate. The prospects of any given country is constrained by its demography. Psychologist Jean Twenge and a colleague’s analysis of data from the General Social Survey of 40,000 Americans aged 30 and over from the 1970s to the 2010s suggests that socioeconomic status (as determined by factors such as income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige), marriage, and happiness are positive correlated and that these relationships are independent of cohort or age. However, the data cannot tell whether marriage causes happiness or the other way around; correlation does not mean causation.

According to a 2019 TD Ameritrade survey of 1,015 U.S. adults aged 23 and older with at least US$10,000 in investable assets, two thirds of people aged 23 to 38 (millennials) felt they were not saving enough for retirement, and the top reason why was expensive housing (37%). This was especially true for millennials with families. 21% said student debt prevented them from saving for the future. For comparison, this number was 12% for Generation X and 5% for the Baby Boomers. While millennials are well known for taking out large amounts of student loans, these are actually not their main source of non-mortgage personal debt, but rather credit card debt. According to a 2019 Harris poll, the average non-mortgage personal debt of millennials was US$27,900, with credit card debt representing the top source at 25%. For comparison, mortgages were the top source of debt for the Baby Boomers and Generation X (28% and 30%, respectively) and student loans for Generation Z (20%).Across the globe, young people have postponed marriage. Millennials were born at a time of declining fertility rates around the world, and are having fewer children than their predecessors. Those in developing nations will continue to constitute the bulk of global population growth. In the developed world, young people of the 2010s were less inclined to have sexual intercourse compared to their predecessors when they were at the same age. In the West, they are less likely to be religious than their predecessors, but they may identify as spiritual.According to Sean Simpsons of Ipsos, people are more likely to vote when they have more at stake, such as children to raise, homes to maintain, and income taxes to pay.From about 1750 to 1950, most of Western Europe transitioned from having both high birth and death rates to low birth and death rates. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the average woman had fewer than two children, and, although demographers at first expected a “correction”, such a rebound came only for a few countries. Despite a bump in the total fertility rates (TFR) of some European countries in the very late twentieth century (the 1980s and 1990s), especially France and Scandinavia, it returned to replacement level only in Sweden (reaching a TFR of 2.14 in 1990, up from 1.68 in 1980), along with Ireland and Iceland; the bump in Sweden was largely due to improving economic output and the generous, far-reaching family benefits granted by the Nordic welfare system, while in France it was mostly driven by older women realizing their dreams of motherhood. For Sweden, the increase in the fertility rate came with a rise in the birth rate (going from 11.7 in 1980 to 14.5 in 1990), which slowed down and then stopped for a brief period to the aging of the Swedish population caused by the decline in birth rates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. To this day, France and Sweden still have higher fertility rates than most of Europe, and both almost reached replacement level in 2010 (2.03 and 1.98 respectively).

In the 1990s, the Chinese government reformed higher education in order to increase access, whereupon significantly more young people, a slight majority of whom being women, have received a university degree. Consequently, many young women are now gainfully employed and financially secure. Traditional views on gender roles dictate that women be responsible for housework and childcare, regardless of their employment status. Workplace discrimination against women (with families) is commonplace; for example, an employer might be more skeptical towards a married woman with one child, fearing she might have another (as the one-child policy was rescinded in 2016) and take more maternity leave. Altogether, there is less incentive for young women to marry.

In the U.S., millennials are the least likely to be religious when compared to older generations. There is a trend towards irreligion that has been increasing since the 1940s. According to a 2012 study by Pew Research, 32 percent of Americans aged 18–29 are irreligious, as opposed to 21 percent aged 30–49, 15 percent aged 50–64, and only 9 percent born aged 65 and above. A 2005 study looked at 1,385 people aged 18 to 25 and found that more than half of those in the study said that they pray regularly before a meal. One-third said that they discussed religion with friends, attended religious services, and read religious material weekly. Twenty-three percent of those studied did not identify themselves as religious practitioners. A 2010 Pew Research Center study on millennials shows that of those between 18 and 29 years old, only 3% of these emerging adults self-identified as “atheists” and only 4% self-identified as “agnostics”. While 68% of those between 18 and 29 years old self-identified as “Christians” (43% self-identified as Protestants and 22% self-identified as Catholics). Overall, 25% of millennials are “Nones” and 75% are religiously affiliated. In 2011, social psychologists Jason Weeden, Adam Cohen, and Douglas Kenrick analyzed survey data sets from the American general public and university undergraduates and discovered that sociosexual tendencies—that is, mating strategies—play a more important role in determining the level of religiousness than any other social variables. In fact, when controlled for family structure and sexual attitudes, variables such as age, sex, and moral beliefs on sexuality substantially drop in significance in determining religiosity. In the context of the United States, religiousness facilitates seeking and maintaining high-fertility, marriage-oriented, heterosexual monogamous relationships. As such, the central goals of religious attendance are reproduction and child-rearing. However, this Reproductive Religiosity Model does not necessarily apply to other countries. In Singapore, for example, they found no relationships between the religiousness of Buddhists and their attitudes towards sexuality. The Economist observed in 2013 that, like their British counterparts, millennials in the United States held more positive attitudes towards recognizing same-sex marriage than older demographic cohorts. However, a 2018 poll conducted by Harris on behalf of the LGBT advocacy group GLAAD found that despite being frequently described as the most tolerant segment of society, people aged 18 to 34—most millennials and the oldest members of Generation Z—have become less accepting LGBT individuals compared to previous years. In 2016, 63% of Americans in that age group said they felt comfortable interacting with members of the LGBT community; that number dropped to 53% in 2017 and then to 45% in 2018. On top of that, more people reported discomfort learning that a family member was LGBT (from 29% in 2017 to 36% in 2018), having a child learning LGBT history (30% to 39%), or having an LGBT doctor (27% to 34%). Harris found that young women were driving this development; their overall comfort levels dived from 64% in 2017 to 52% in 2018. In general, the fall of comfort levels was the steepest among people aged 18 to 34 between 2016 and 2018. (Seniors aged 72 or above became more tolerant of LGBT doctors or having their (grand) children taking LGBT history lessons during the same period, albeit with a bump in discomfort levels in 2017.) Results from this Harris poll were released on the 50th anniversary of the riots that broke out in Stonewall Inn, New York City, in June 1969, thought to be the start of the LGBT rights movement. At that time, homosexuality was considered a mental illness or a crime in many U.S. states. In Sweden, universities are tuition-free, as is the case in Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland. However, Swedish students typically graduate very indebted due to the high cost of living in their country, especially in the large cities such as Stockholm. The ratio of debt to expected income after graduation for Swedes was about 80% in 2013. In the U.S., despite incessant talk of student debt reaching epic proportions, that number stood at 60%. Moreover, about seven out of eight Swedes graduate with debt, compared to one half in the U.S. In the 2008–09 academic year, virtually all Swedish students take advantage of state-sponsored financial aid packages from a govern agency known as the Centrala Studiestödsnämnden (CSN), which include low-interest loans with long repayment schedules (25 years or until the student turns 60). In Sweden, student aid is based on their own earnings whereas in some other countries, such as Germany or the United States, such aid is premised on parental income as parents are expected to help foot the bill for their children’s education. In the 2008–09 academic year, Australia, Austria, Japan, the Netherlands, and New Zealand saw an increase in both the average tuition fees of their public universities for full-time domestic students and the percentage of students taking advantage of state-sponsored student aid compared to 1995. In the United States, there was an increase in the former but not the latter.Vietnam’s median age in 2018 was 26 and rising. Between the 1970s and the late 2010s, life expectancy climbed from 60 to 76. It is now the second highest in Southeast Asia. Vietnam’s fertility rate dropped from 5 in 1980 to 3.55 in 1990 and then to 1.95 in 2017. In that same year, 23% of the Vietnamese population was 15 years of age or younger, down from almost 40% in 1989. Other rapidly growing Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines, saw similar demographic trends.

Europe’s demographic reality contributes to its economic troubles. Because the European baby boomers failed to replace themselves, by the 2020s and 2030s, dozens of European nations will find their situation even tougher than before. A 2018 Gallup poll found that people aged 18 to 29 have a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism, 51% to 45%. Nationally, 56% of Americans prefer capitalism compared to 37% who favor socialism. Older Americans consistently prefer capitalism to socialism. Whether the current attitudes of millennials and Generation Z on capitalism and socialism will persist or dissipate as they grow older remains to be seen. 2018 surveys of American teenagers 13 to 17 and adults aged 18 or over conducted by the Pew Research Center found that millennials and Generation Z held similar views on various political and social issues. More specifically, 56% of millennials believed that climate change is real and is due to human activities while only 8% reject the scientific consensus on climate change. 64% wanted the government to play a more active role in solving their problems. 65% were indifferent towards pre-nuptial cohabitation. 48% considered single motherhood to be neither a positive or a negative for society. 61% saw increased ethnic or racial diversity as good for society. 47% did the same for same-sex marriage, and 53% interracial marriage. (See chart.) In most cases, millennials tended hold quite different views from the Silent Generation, with the Baby Boomers and Generation X in between. In the case of financial responsibility in a two-parent household, though, majorities from across the generations answered that it should be shared, with 58% for the Silent Generation, 73% for the Baby Boomers, 78% for Generation X, and 79% for both the millennials and Generation Z. Across all the generations surveyed, at least 84% thought that both parents ought to be responsible for rearing children. Very few thought that fathers should be the ones mainly responsible for taking care of children.

There is also a contention that the major differences are found solely between millennials and Generation X. Researchers from the University of Missouri and The University of Tennessee conducted a study based on measurement equivalence to determine if such a difference does in fact exist. The study looked at 1,860 participants who had completed the Multidimensional Work Ethic Profile (MWEP), a survey aimed at measuring identification with work-ethic characteristics, across a 12-year period spanning from 1996 to 2008. The results of the findings suggest the main difference in work ethic sentiments arose between the two most recent generational cohorts, Generation X and millennials, with relatively small variances between the two generations and their predecessor, the Baby Boomers.According to a cross-generational study comparing millennials to Generation X conducted at Wharton School of Business, more than half of millennial undergraduates surveyed do not plan to have children. The researchers compared surveys of the Wharton graduating class of 1992 and 2012. In 1992, 78% of women planned to eventually have children dropping to 42% in 2012. The results were similar for male students. The research revealed among both genders the proportion of undergraduates who reported they eventually planned to have children had dropped in half over the course of a generation. Quest reported in March 2020 that, in Belgium, 11% of women and 16% of men between the ages of 25 and 35 did not want children and that in the Netherlands, 10% of 30-year-old women polled had decided against having children or having more children. A 2019 study revealed that among 191 Swedish men aged 20 to 50, 39 were not fathers and did not want to have children in the future (20.4%). Desire to have (more) children was not related to level of education, country of birth, sexual orientation or relationship status. Some Swedish men “passively” choose not to have children because they feel their life is already good as it is without bringing children to the world, and because they do not face the same amount of social pressure to have children the way voluntarily childless women do.

In 2019, the Pew Research Center interviewed over 2,000 Americans aged 18 and over on their views of various components of the federal government. They found that 54% of the people between the ages of 18 and 29 wanted larger government and larger compared to 43% who preferred smaller government and fewer services. Meanwhile, 46% of those between the ages of 30 and 49 favored larger government compared to 49% who picked the other option. Older people were more likely to dislike larger government. Overall, the American people remain divided over the size and scope of government, with 48% preferring smaller government with fewer services and 46% larger government and more services. They found that the most popular federal agencies were the U.S. Postal Service (90% favorable), the National Park Service (86%), NASA (81%), the CDC (80%), the FBI (70%), the Census Bureau (69%), the SSA (66%), the CIA, and the Federal Reserve (both 65%). There is very little to no partisan divide on the Postal Service, the National Park Service, NASA, the CIA, the Census Bureau.

According to IMF, “Vietnam is at risk of growing old before it grows rich.” The share of working-age Vietnamese peaked in 2011, when the country’s annual GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was $5,024, compared to $32,585 for South Korea, $31,718 for Japan, and $9,526 for China. Many Vietnamese youths suffer from unstable job markets, low wages, and high costs of living in the cities. As a result, large numbers live with their parents till the age of 30. These are some of the reasons contributing to Vietnam’s falling fertility rate and population aging.According to a 2013 YouGov poll of almost a thousand Britons between the ages of 18 and 24, 56% said they had never attended a place of worship, other than for a wedding or a funeral. 25% said they believed in God, 19% in a “spiritual greater power” while 38% said they did not believe in God nor any other “greater spiritual power”. The poll also found that 14% thought religion was a “cause of good” in the world while 41% thought religion was “the cause of evil”. 34% answered “neither”. The British Social Attitudes Survey found that 71% of British 18–24 year-olds were not religious, with just 3% affiliated to the once-dominant Church of England, and 5% say they are Catholics, and 14% say they belong to other Christian denomination.

Fred Bonner, a Samuel DeWitt Proctor Chair in Education at Rutgers University and author of Diverse Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs, believes that much of the commentary on the Millennial Generation may be partially correct, but overly general and that many of the traits they describe apply primarily to “white, affluent teenagers who accomplish great things as they grow up in the suburbs, who confront anxiety when applying to super-selective colleges, and who multitask with ease as their helicopter parents hover reassuringly above them.” During class discussions, Bonner listened to black and Hispanic students describe how some or all of the so-called core traits did not apply to them. They often said that the “special” trait, in particular, is unrecognizable. Other socioeconomic groups often do not display the same attributes commonly attributed to millennials. “It’s not that many diverse parents don’t want to treat their kids as special,” he says, “but they often don’t have the social and cultural capital, the time and resources, to do that.” In 2018, as the number of robots at work continued to increase, the global unemployment rate fell to 5%, the lowest in 38 years. Current trends suggest that developments in artificial intelligence and robotics will not result in mass unemployment but can actually create high-skilled jobs. However, in order to take advantage of this situation, one needs to hone skills that machines have not yet mastered, such as teamwork and effective communication. Spanish think-tank Fedea noted that there were way too few young Europeans enrolled in vocational programs that teach them skills favored by the job market. Many new entrants to the workforce lacked the necessary skills demanded by employers.As a result of cultural ideals, government policy, and modern medicine, there has been severe gender imbalances in China and India. According to the United Nations, in 2018, there were 112 Chinese males aged 15 to 29 for every hundred females in that age group. That number in India was 111. China had a total of 34 million excess males and India 37 million, more than the entire population of Malaysia. Such a discrepancy fuels loneliness epidemics, human trafficking (from elsewhere in Asia, such as Cambodia and Vietnam), and prostitution, among other societal problems.

Computer games and computer culture has led to a decrease in reading books. The tendency for teachers to now “teach to the test” has also led to a decrease in the capacity to think in lateral ways.

The youth unemployment rate in the U.S. reached a record 19% in July 2010 since the statistic started being gathered in 1948. Underemployment is also a major factor. In the U.S. the economic difficulties have led to dramatic increases in youth poverty, unemployment, and the numbers of young people living with their parents. In April 2012, it was reported that half of all new college graduates in the US were still either unemployed or underemployed.Average home sizes was declining between the early- and late-2010s. Nevertheless, entry-level homes, which almost ceased to exist due to the housing bubble, started to return in numbers as builders respond to rising demand from millennials. In order to cut construction costs, builders offer few to no options for floor plans. Previously, the Great Recession forced millennials delay home ownership. But by the late 2010s, older millennials had accumulated sufficient savings and were ready to buy a home, get married, and have children. Prices have risen in the late 2010s due to high demand, but this could attract more companies to enter the business of building affordable homes.

Writing for The Atlantic in 2018, Kate Julian reported that among the countries that kept track of the sexual behavior of their citizens—Australia, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—all saw a decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse among teenagers and young adults. Although experts disagree on the methodology of data analysis, they do believe that young people today are less sexually engaged than their elders, such as the baby boomers, when they were their age. This is despite the fact that online dating platforms allow for the possibility of casual sex, the wide availability of contraception, and the relaxation of attitudes towards sex outside of marriage.As a result of the shocks due to the decline and dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia’s birth rates began falling in the late 1980s while death rates have risen, especially among men. In the early 2000s, Russia had not only a falling birth rate but also a declining population despite having an improving economy. Between 1992 and 2002, Russia’s population dropped from 149 million to 144 million. According to the “medium case scenario” of the U.N.’s Population Division, Russia could lose another 20 million people by the 2020s.

By the time they neared midlife in the early 2020s, the bulk of older American millennials had entered the housing market. Polling commissioned by CNBC suggested that by February 2021 59% of those born from 1981 to 1988 owned their own home. Most of this group had owned a home for more than five years whilst the vast majority had used a mortgage to help fund their purchase. However, the research also indicated that 28% of individuals in this age range were renting whilst 12% still lived with their parents or other family. Members of this cohort were less likely to be homeowners than their elders had at the same age. Individuals with tertiary education were substantially more likely to own a home than those without it. Those of black and Hispanic ethnicity were slightly less likely to be homeowners than their white counterparts. The most common reason responders gave for not having bought a home was lack of sufficient savings.As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, interest in suburban properties skyrocketed, with millennials being the largest block of buyers. In May 2020, when the real-estate market was recovering, searches for suburban properties rose 13%, or twice the rate for urban areas. This trend was observed in more than 50 of the largest 100 American metropolitan areas. In New York City, for example, demand for apartment units in Manhattan nosedived at an annualized rate of 80% in May. As more and more people reconsider whether they would like to live in a densely populated urban environment with high-rise apartments, cultural amenities, and shared spaces rather than a suburban single-family home with their own backyard, the homebuilding industry was seeing better recovery than expected. As millennials and senior citizens increasingly demand affordable housing outside the major cities, to prevent another housing bubble, banks and regulators have restricted lending to filter out speculators and those with bad credit.In early 2019, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics Youth Poll asked voters aged 18 to 29—younger millennials and the first wave of Generation Z—what they would like to be priorities for U.S. foreign policy. They found that the top issues for these voters were countering terrorism and protecting human rights (both 39%), and protecting the environment (34%). Preventing nuclear proliferation and defending U.S. allies were not as important to young American voters. The Poll found that support for single-payer universal healthcare and free college dropped, down 8% to 47% and down 5% to 51%, respectively, if cost estimates were provided.In 2012, £9,000 worth of student fees were introduced. Despite this, the number of people interested in pursuing higher education grew at a faster rate than the UK population. In 2017, almost half of young people in England had received higher education by the age of 30. Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced the goal of having half of young Britons having a university degree in 1999, though the 2010 deadline was missed. What the Prime Minister did not realize, however, is that an oversupply of young people with high levels of education historically precipitated periods of political instability and unrest in various societies, from early modern Western Europe and late Tokugawa Japan to the Soviet Union, modern Iran, and the United States. In any case, demand for higher education in the United Kingdom has remained strong throughout the early 21st century, driven by the need for high-skilled workers from both the public and private sectors. There has been, however, a widening gender gap. As of 2017, women were more likely to attend or to have attended university than men, by 55% against 43%, a difference of 12 percentage points.

By analyzing polling data, the Wall Street Journal found that 19% of voters aged 18 to 24 either did not vote or were unsure, as did 17% of voters aged 25 to 49. Meanwhile, 10% of voters aged 50 to 64 and 6% of voters aged 65 and over abstained or were undecided. Overall, 52% (or 17.4 million) of British voters chose to leave and 48% (or 16.1 million) to remain in the E.U. Voter turnout was 72%, a sizeable figure, though not the largest on record after World War II, which was 84% in 1950. However, only 28.8 million people voted in 1950, compared to about 33.6 million in 2016. Still, it is the highest since 1992, as of 2019. That turnouts in millennial-majority constituencies were subpar while those in working-class neighborhoods were above average contributed to the outcome of the Brexit Referendum. Public opinion polls often underestimated the political power of working-class voters because these people are typically underrepresented in samples. Commonly made predictions of a victory for the Remain side created a sense of complacency among those who wanted the U.K. to remain in the European Union and a sense of urgency among those who wanted to leave.Because jobs (that suited what one studied) were so difficult to find in the few years following the Great Recession, the value of getting a liberal arts degree and studying the humanities at an American university came into question, their ability to develop a well-rounded and broad-minded individual notwithstanding. As of 2019, the total college debt has exceeded US$1.5 trillion, and two out of three college graduates are saddled with debt. The average borrower owes US$37,000, up US$10,000 from ten years before. A 2019 survey by TD Ameritrade found that over 18% of millennials (and 30% of Generation Z) said they have considered taking a gap year between high school and college.A meta study conducted by researchers from The George Washington University and The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences questions the validity of workplace differences across any generational cohort. According to the researchers, disagreement in which events to include when assigning generational cohorts, as well as varied opinions on which age ranges to include in each generational category are the main drivers behind their skepticism. The analysis of 20 research reports focusing on the three work-related factors of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intent to turn over proved any variation was too small to discount the impact of employee tenure and aging of individuals. Newer research shows that millennials change jobs for the same reasons as other generations—namely, more money and a more innovative work environment. They look for versatility and flexibility in the workplace, and strive for a strong work–life balance in their jobs and have similar career aspirations to other generations, valuing financial security and a diverse workplace just as much as their older colleagues.One of the most popular forms of media use by millennials is social networking. Millennials use social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to create a different sense of belonging, make acquaintances, and to remain connected with friends. In 2010, research was published in the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research which claimed that students who used social media and decided to quit showed the same withdrawal symptoms of a drug addict who quit their stimulant. In the 2014 PBS Frontline episode “Generation Like” there is discussion about millennials, their dependence on technology, and the ways the social media sphere is commoditized. Some millennials enjoy having hundreds of channels from cable TV. However, some other millennials do not even have a TV, so they watch media over the Internet using smartphones and tablets. Jesse Singal of New York magazine argues that this technology has created a rift within the generation; older millennials, defined here as those born 1988 and earlier, came of age prior to widespread usage and availability of smartphones, in contrast to younger millennials, those born in 1989 and later, who were exposed to this technology in their teen years.

Members of this demographic cohort are known as millennials because the oldest became adults around the turn of the millennium. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe, known for creating the Strauss–Howe generational theory, are widely credited with naming the millennials. They coined the term in 1987, around the time children born in 1982 were entering kindergarten, and the media were first identifying their prospective link to the impending new millennium as the high school graduating class of 2000. They wrote about the cohort in their books Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 (1991) and Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (2000).

According to a YouGov poll conducted right before the referendum on the possible departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Brexit) in 2016, almost three quarters of voters aged 18 to 24 opposed leaving the E.U. while just under one fifth supported leaving. 64% of Britons aged 25 to 29 and 61% between the ages of 30 and 35 supported remaining in the E.U. Meanwhile, 34% of pensioners wanted to remain and 59% wanted to leave. Older people were more likely to vote, and vote to leave. One of the reasons behind this generational gap is the fundamentally different environment that millennial voters grew up in. Many older voters came of age when Britain was a less ethnically diverse country, when collective memory of the British Empire and its victory in World War II was strong, when most people did not attend university, and spent a large part of their formative years in a society where abortion and homosexuality were illegal and the death penalty was in use. By contrast, millennials, many of whom supported the left-wing politician Jeremy Corbyn, grew up at a time when the United Kingdom was a member of the EU, when graduation from university was common, and when the political consensus favoured immigration and EU membership. But age is not the only reason, as voter data shows.Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote for The Economist in 2018 that “generations are squishy concepts”, but the 1981 to 1996 birth cohort is a “widely accepted” definition for millennials. Reuters also state that the “widely accepted definition” is 1981–1996. According to the U.S. Department of Education, people with technical or vocational trainings are slightly more likely to be employed than those with a bachelor’s degree and significantly more likely to be employed in their fields of specialty. The United States currently suffers from a shortage of skilled tradespeople. At the start of the twenty-first century, export-oriented South Korea and Taiwan were young and dynamic compared to Japan, but they, too, were aging quickly. Their millennial cohorts are too small compared to the baby boomers. The fact that large numbers of South Koreans and Taiwanese were entering retirement will restrict the ability of their countries to save and invest.Despite economic recovery and despite being more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher, millennials are at a financial disadvantage compared to the Baby Boomers and Generation X because of the Great Recession and expensive higher education. Income has become less predictable due to the rise of short-term and freelance positions. According to a 2019 report from the non-partisan non-profit think tank New America, a household headed by a person under 35 in 2016 had an average net worth of almost US$11,000, compared to US$20,000 in 1995. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, an average millennial (20 to 35 in 2016) owned US$162,000 of assets, compared to US$198,000 for Generation X at the same age (20 to 35 in 2001). Risk management specialist and business economist Olivia S. Mitchell of the University of Pennsylvania calculated that in order to retire at 50% of their last salary before retirement, millennials will have to save 40% of their incomes for 30 years. She told CNBC, “Benefits from Social Security are 76% higher if you claim at age 70 versus 62, which can substitute for a lot of extra savings.” Maintaining a healthy lifestyle—avoiding smoking, over-drinking, and sleep deprivation—should prove beneficial.

In 2008, author Ron Alsop called the millennials “Trophy Kids,” a term that reflects a trend in competitive sports, as well as many other aspects of life, where mere participation is frequently enough for a reward. It has been reported that this is an issue in corporate environments. Some employers are concerned that millennials have too great expectations from the workplace. Some studies predict they will switch jobs frequently, holding many more jobs than Gen Xers due to their great expectations. Psychologist Jean Twenge reports data suggesting there are differences between older and younger millennials regarding workplace expectations, with younger millennials being “more practical” and “more attracted to industries with steady work and are more likely to say they are willing to work overtime” which Twenge attributes to younger millennials coming of age following the financial crisis of 2007–2008.In the United States, between the late 1970s and the late 2010s, the shares of people who were married declined among the lower class (from 60% down to 33%) and the middle class (84% down to 66%), but remained steady among the upper class (~80%). In fact, it was the lower and middle classes that were driving the U.S. marriage rate down. Among Americans aged 25 to 39, the divorce rate per 1,000 married persons dropped from 30 to 24 between 1990 and 2015. For comparison, among those aged 50 and up, the divorce rate went from 5 in 1990 to 10 in 2015; that among people aged 40 to 49 increased from 18 to 21 per 1,000 married persons. In general, the level of education is a predictor of marriage and income. University graduates are more likely to get married but less likely to divorce.

In modern society, there are inevitably people who refuse to conform to the dominant culture and seek to do the exact opposite; given enough time, the anti-conformists will become more homogeneous with respect to their own subculture, making their behavior the opposite to any claims of counterculture. This synchronization occurs even if more than two choices are available, such as multiple styles of beard rather than whether or not to have a beard. Mathematician Jonathan Touboul of Brandeis University who studies how information propagation through society affects human behavior calls this the hipster effect.At first, falling fertility is due to urbanization and decreased infant mortality rates, which diminished the benefits and increased the costs of raising children. In other words, it became more economically sensible to invest more in fewer children, as economist Gary Becker argued. (This is the first demographic transition.) Falling fertility then came from attitudinal shifts. By the 1960s, people began moving from traditional and communal values towards more expressive and individualistic outlooks due to access to and aspiration of higher education, and to the spread of lifestyle values once practiced only by a tiny minority of cultural elites. (This is the second demographic transition.) Although the momentous cultural changes of the 1960s leveled off by the 1990s, the social and cultural environment of the very late twentieth-century was quite different from that of the 1950s. Such changes in values have had a major effect on fertility. Member states of the European Economic Community saw a steady increase in not just divorce and out-of-wedlock births between 1960 and 1985 but also falling fertility rates. In 1981, a survey of countries across the industrialized world found that while more than half of people aged 65 and over thought that women needed children to be fulfilled, only 35% of those between the ages of 15 and 24 (younger Baby Boomers and older Generation X) agreed. In the early 1980s, East Germany, West Germany, Denmark, and the Channel Islands had some of the world’s lowest fertility rates. By analyzing U.S. Census data, demographer William H. Frey at the Brookings Institution found that, following the Great Recession, American suburbs grew faster than dense urban cores. For example, for every one person who moved to New York City, five moved out to one of its suburbs. Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2017 revealed that Americans aged 25–29 were 25% more likely to move from a city to a suburb than the other way around; for older millennials, that number was 50%. Economic recovery and easily obtained mortgages help explain this phenomenon. Millennial homeowners are more likely to be in the suburbs than the cities. This trend will likely continue as more and more millennials purchase a home. 2019 was the fourth year in a row where the number of millennials living in the major American cities declined measurably. Exurbs are increasingly popular among millennials, too. According to Karen Harris, managing director at Bain Macro Trends, at the current rate of growth, exurbs will have more people than cities for the first time in 2025. In 2018, 80,000 millennials left the nation’s largest cities. Among the Baby Boomers who have retired, a significant portion opts to live in the suburbs, where the Millennials are also moving to in large numbers as they have children of their own. These confluent trends increase the level of economic activities in the American suburbs. Yet by the late 2010s, things changed. Like older generations, millennials reevaluate their life choices as they age. Millennials no longer felt attracted by cosmopolitan metropolitan areas the way they once did. A 2018 Gallup poll found that despite living in a highly urbanized country, most Americans would rather live in rural counties than the cities. While rural America lacked the occupational diversity offered by urban America, multiple rural counties can still match one major city in terms of economic opportunities. In addition, rural towns suffered from shortages of certain kinds of professionals, such as medical doctors, and young people moving in, or back, could make a difference for both themselves and their communities. The slower pace of life and lower costs of living were both important.

As of the mid-2010s, the United States is one of the few developed countries that does not have a top-heavy population pyramid. In fact, as of 2016, the median age of the U.S. population was younger than that of all other rich nations except Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus, Ireland, and Iceland, whose combined population is only a fraction of the United States. This is because American baby boomers had a higher fertility rate compared to their counterparts from much of the developed world. Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea are all aging rapidly by comparison because their millennials are smaller in number than their parents. This demographic reality puts the United States at an advantage compared to many other major economies as the millennials reach middle age: the nation will still have a significant number of consumers, investors, and taxpayers.

In August 1993, an Advertising Age editorial coined the phrase Generation Y to describe teenagers of the day, then aged 13–19 (born 1974–1980), who were at the time defined as different from Generation X. However, the 1974–1980 cohort was later re-identified by most media sources as the last wave of Generation X, and by 2003 Ad Age had moved their Generation Y starting year up to 1982. According to journalist Bruce Horovitz, in 2012, Ad Age “threw in the towel by conceding that millennials is a better name than Gen Y,” and by 2014, a past director of data strategy at Ad Age said to NPR “the Generation Y label was a placeholder until we found out more about them.”Millennials are sometimes called echo boomers, due to them often being the offspring of the baby boomers, the significant increase in birth rates from the early 1980s to mid-1990s, and their generation’s large size relative to that of boomers. In the United States, the echo boom’s birth rates peaked in August 1990 and a twentieth-century trend toward smaller families in developed countries continued. Psychologist Jean Twenge described millennials as “Generation Me” in her 2006 book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before, while in 2013, Time magazine ran a cover story titled Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation. Alternative names for this group proposed include the Net Generation, Generation 9/11, Generation Next, and The Burnout Generation.

Despite expensive housing costs, Canada’s largest cities, Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, continue to attract millennials thanks to their economic opportunities and cultural amenities. Research by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) revealed that for every person in the 20-34 age group who leaves the nation’s top cities, Toronto gains seven while Vancouver and Montreal gain up to a dozen each. In fact, there has been a surge in the millennial populations of Canada’s top three cities between 2015 and 2018. However, millennials’ rate of home ownership will likely drop as increasing numbers choose to rent instead. By 2019, however, Ottawa emerged as a magnet for millennials with its strong labor market and comparatively low cost of living, according to a study by Ryerson University. Many of the millennials relocating to the nation’s capital were above the age of 25, meaning they were more likely to be job seekers and home buyers rather than students.

By analyzing voter data, political scientists Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin came to the conclusion that the popular narrative that the rise of national-populist movements seen across much of the Western world is due largely to angry old white men who would soon be replaced by younger and more liberal voters is flawed. In many European democracies, national-populist politicians and political parties tend to be the most popular among voters below the age of 40. In France, Marine Le Pen and her National Rally (formerly the National Front) won more votes from people between the ages of 18 and 35 during the first round of the 2017 Presidential election than any other candidates. In Italy, Matteo Salvini and his League have a base of support with virtually no generational gap. In Austria, more than one in two men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for the Freedom Party in 2016. The Alternative for Germany’s strongest support came not from senior citizens but voters between 25 and 50 years of age. The Sweden Democrats were the second most popular political party for voters aged 18 to 24 and the most popular for those between 35 and 54 before the 2018 Swedish general election. According to SVT, 13% of those aged 18–21 voted for the Sweden Democrats in 2018 and 14% of those aged 22–30, making them the third largest party in both cases. That figure rose to 21% of 31-64 year-olds, making them second biggest in that age group.

A 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by researchers from Indiana University in the United States and the Karolinska Institutet from Sweden found that during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, young Americans had sexual intercourse less frequently than in the past. Among men aged 18 to 24, the share of the sexually inactive increased from 18.9% between 2000 and 2002 to 30.9% between 2016 and 2018. Women aged 18 to 34 had sex less often as well. Reasons for this trend are manifold. People who were unemployed, only had part-time jobs, and students were the most likely to forego sexual experience while those who had higher income were stricter in mate selection. Psychologist Jean Twenge, who did not participate in the study, suggested that this might be due to “a broader cultural trend toward delayed development”, meaning various adult activities are postponed. She noted that being economically dependent on one’s parents discourages sexual intercourse. Other researchers noted that the rise of the Internet, computer games, and social media could play a role, too, since older and married couples also had sex less often. In short, people had many options. A 2019 study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found a similar trend in the United Kingdom. Although this trend precedes the COVID-19 pandemic, fear of infection is likely to fuel the trend the future, study co-author Peter Ueda told Reuters.

Millennials are the most highly educated and culturally diverse group of all generations, and have been regarded as hard to please when it comes to employers. To address these new challenges, many large firms are currently studying the social and behavioral patterns of millennials and are trying to devise programs that decrease intergenerational estrangement, and increase relationships of reciprocal understanding between older employees and millennials. The UK’s Institute of Leadership & Management researched the gap in understanding between millennial recruits and their managers in collaboration with Ashridge Business School. The findings included high expectations for advancement, salary and for a coaching relationship with their manager, and suggested that organizations will need to adapt to accommodate and make the best use of millennials. In an example of a company trying to do just this, Goldman Sachs conducted training programs that used actors to portray millennials who assertively sought more feedback, responsibility, and involvement in decision making. After the performance, employees discussed and debated the generational differences which they saw played out. In 2014, millennials were entering an increasingly multi-generational workplace. Even though research has shown that millennials are joining the workforce during a tough economic time, they still have remained optimistic, as shown when about nine out of ten millennials surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that they currently have enough money or that they will eventually reach their long-term financial goals.In the United States today, high school students are generally encouraged to attend college or university after graduation while the options of technical school and vocational training are often neglected. Historically, high schools separated students on career tracks, with programs aimed at students bound for higher education and those bound for the workforce. Students with learning disabilities or behavioral issues were often directed towards vocational or technical schools. All this changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s thanks to a major effort in the large cities to provide more abstract academic education to everybody. The mission of high schools became preparing students for college, referred to as “high school to Harvard.” However, this program faltered in the 2010s, as institutions of higher education came under heightened skepticism due to high costs and disappointing results. People became increasingly concerned about debts and deficits. No longer were promises of educating “citizens of the world” or estimates of economic impact coming from abstruse calculations sufficient. Colleges and universities found it necessary to prove their worth by clarifying how much money from which industry and company funded research, and how much it would cost to attend.

Millennials in the U.S. were initially not keen on getting a driver’s license or owning a vehicle thanks to new licensing laws and the state of the economy when they came of age, but the oldest among them have already begun buying cars in great numbers. In 2016, millennials purchased more cars and trucks than any living generation except the Baby Boomers; in fact, millennials overtook Baby Boomers in car ownership in California that year. A working paper by economists Christopher Knittel and Elizabeth Murphy then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Household Transportation Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau, and American Community Survey in order to compare the driving habits of the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the oldest millennials (born between 1980 and 1984). That found that on the surface, the popular story is true: American millennials on average own 0.4 fewer cars than their elders. But when various factors—including income, marital status, number of children, and geographical location—were taken into account, such a distinction ceased to be. In addition, once those factors are accounted for, millennials actually drive longer distances than the Baby Boomers. Economic forces, namely low gasoline prices, higher income, and suburban growth, result in millennials having an attitude towards cars that is no different from that of their predecessors. An analysis of the National Household Travel Survey by the State Smart Transportation Initiative revealed that higher-income millennials drive less than their peers probably because they are able to afford the higher costs of living in large cities, where they can take advantage of alternative modes of transportation, including public transit and ride-hailing services.Greece also suffers from a serious demographic problem as many young people are leaving the country in search of better opportunities elsewhere in the wake of the Great Recession. This brain drain and a rapidly aging population could spell disaster for the country.

In 2015, educational psychologist Jonathan Wai analyzed average test scores from the Army General Classification Test in 1946 (10,000 students), the Selective Service College Qualification Test in 1952 (38,420), Project Talent in the early 1970s (400,000), the Graduate Record Examination between 2002 and 2005 (over 1.2 million), and the SAT Math and Verbal in 2014 (1.6 million). Wai identified one consistent pattern: those with
the highest test scores tended to pick the physical sciences and engineering as their majors while those with the lowest were more likely to choose education. (See figure below.) In 2016, research from the Resolution Foundation found millennials in the United Kingdom earned £8,000 less in their 20s than Generation X, describing millennials as “on course to become the first generation to earn less than the one before”. According to a report from the same organization in 2017, the rate of home ownership of British baby boomers was 75% and “the real value of estates passing on death has more than doubled over the past 20 years.” For this reason, the transfer of wealth between the baby boomers and their children, the millennials, will prove highly beneficial to the latter compared to previous cohorts, especially those who came from high-income families. In 2010 the Journal of Business and Psychology, contributors Myers and Sadaghiani find millennials “expect close relationships and frequent feedback from supervisors” to be a main point of differentiation. Multiple studies observe millennials’ associating job satisfaction with free flow of information, strong connectivity to supervisors, and more immediate feedback. Hershatter and Epstein, researchers from Emory University, argue many of these traits can be linked to millennials entering the educational system on the cusp of academic reform, which created a much more structured educational system. Some argue in the wake of these reforms, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, millennials have increasingly sought the aid of mentors and advisers, leading to 66% of millennials seeking a flat work environment.

In 2005, judges in Karlsruhe, Germany, struck down a ban on university fees as unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right of German states to regulate their own higher education systems. This ban was introduced in order to ensure equality of access to higher education regardless of socioeconomic class. Bavarian Science Minister Thomas Goppel told the Associated Press, “Fees will help to preserve the quality of universities.” Supporters of fees argued that they would help ease the financial burden on universities and would incentivize students to study more efficiently, despite not covering the full cost of higher education, an average of €8,500 as of 2005. Opponents believed fees would make it more difficult for people to study and graduate on time. Germany also suffered from a brain drain, as many bright researchers moved abroad while relatively few international students were interested in coming to Germany. This has led to the decline of German research institutions.In 2018, Gallup conducted a survey of almost 14,000 Americans from all 50 states and the District of Columbia aged 18 and over on their political sympathies. They found that overall, younger adults tended to lean liberal while older adults tilted conservative. More specifically, groups with strong conservative leanings included the elderly, residents of the Midwest and the South, and people with some or no college education. Groups with strong liberal leanings were adults with advanced degrees, whereas those with moderate liberal leanings included younger adults (18 to 29 and 30 to 49), women, and residents of the East. Gallup found little variations by income groups compared to the national average. Among adults between the ages of 18 and 29—older Generation Z and younger millennials—Gallup found that 30% identified as liberals, 40% as moderates, and 26% as conservatives. Among adults aged 30 to 49—older millennials and younger Generation X—they found that 30% considered themselves liberals, 37% moderates, and 29% conservatives.(See above.) Between 1992 and 2018, the number of people identifying as liberals steadily increased, 17% to 26%, mainly at the expense of the group identifying as moderates. Meanwhile, the proportion of conservatives remained largely unchanged, albeit with fluctuations. Between 1994 and 2018, the number of members of the Democratic Party identifying as liberal rose from 25% to 51%, as the number of both moderates and conservatives gradually fell. Liberals became a majority in this political party for the first time in 2018. During the same period, in the Republican Party, the proportion of people calling themselves conservatives climbed from 58% to 73% while the numbers of moderates and liberals both dropped. In other words, this political party saw its conservative majority expanding. Meanwhile, among political independents, the percentage of moderates, the dominant group, remained largely unchanged.

Polling agency Ipsos-MORI warned that the word “millennials” is “misused to the point where it’s often mistaken for just another meaningless buzzword” because “many of the claims made about millennial characteristics are simplified, misinterpreted or just plain wrong, which can mean real differences get lost” and that “[e]qually important are the similarities between other generations—the attitudes and behaviors that are staying the same are sometimes just as important and surprising.”By the late 2010s, viewership of late-night American television among adults aged 18 to 49, the most important demographic group for advertisers, has fallen substantially despite an abundance of materials. This is due in part to the availability and popularity of streaming services. However, when delayed viewing within three days is taken into account, the top shows all saw their viewership numbers boosted. This development undermines the current business model of the television entertainment industry. “If the sky isn’t exactly falling on the broadcast TV advertising model, it certainly se
ems to be a lot closer to the ground than it once was,” wrote reporter Anthony Crupi for Ad Age. Despite having the reputation for “killing” many things of value to the older generations, millennials and Generation Z are nostalgically preserving Polaroid cameras, vinyl records, needlepoint, and home gardening, to name a few. In fact, Millennials are a key cohort behind the vinyl revival. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, certain items whose futures were in doubt due to a general lack of interest by millennials appear to be reviving with stronger sales than in previous years, such as canned food.

A 2016 U.S. study found that church attendance during young adulthood was 41% among Generation Z, 18% for the millennials, 21% for Generation X, and 26% for the Baby Boomers when they were at the same age. A 2016 survey by Barna and Impact 360 Institute on about 1,500 Americans aged 13 and up suggests that the proportion of atheists and agnostics was 21% among Generation Z, 15% for millennials, 13% for Generation X, and 9% for Baby Boomers. 59% of Generation Z were Christians (including Catholics), as were 65% for the millennials, 65% for Generation X, and 75% for the Baby Boomers. 41% of teens believed that science and the Bible are fundamentally at odds with one another, with 27% taking the side of science and 17% picking religion. For comparison, 45% of millennials, 34% of Generation X, and 29% of the Baby Boomers believed such a conflict exists. 31% of Generation Z believed that science and religion refer to different aspects of reality, on par with millennials and Generation X (both 30%), and above the Baby Boomers (25%). 28% of Generation Z thought that science and religion are complementary, compared to 25% of millennials, 36% of Generation X, and 45% for Baby Boomers.Due to the strong correlation between economic growth and youth employment, recessions come with dire consequences for young people in the workforce. In the struggling Southern European economies, such as Greece and Spain, youth unemployment lingered on in the aftermath of the Great Recession, remaining stuck at around a third. With another recession induced by the COVID-19 global pandemic, it could rise to about half. Even the Czech Republic, which previously boasted the lowest youth unemployment rate in Europe, at about 5%, could see that number triple in 2020. Overall, European job markets are hostile towards new entrants, who, unlike their older counterparts, do not have permanent contracts and are often the first to be laid off during hard times.

Chinese millennials are commonly called the post-80s and post-90s generations. At a 2015 conference in Shanghai organized by University of Southern California’s US–China Institute, millennials in China were examined and contrasted with American millennials. Findings included millennials’ marriage, childbearing, and child raising preferences, life and career ambitions, and attitudes towards volunteerism and activism. Due to the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s, one-child households have become the norm in China, leading to rapid population aging, especially in the cities where the costs of living are much higher than in the countryside.

Between the late-2000s and mid-2010s, Canada’s tourism deficit—the difference in the amount Canadian travelers spent inside versus outside the nation—grew considerably, exceeding CAN$10 billion in 2008. According to Destination Canada, a Crown agency responsible for promoting tourism in Canada, younger Canadians were eight times more likely to travel outside Canada than inside the nation. This is due to a number of factors. The cost of transportation within Canada was often higher than that of traveling to other countries. For example, flight tickets to Europe were often cheaper than to Toronto or Montreal. Many Canadian millennials view foreign destinations as exotic and more desirable than in Canada. Social media influenced this tendency, as posts showcasing non-Canadian sites were better received than those about Canadian destinations.Psychologist Jean Twenge, the author of the 2006 book Generation Me, considers millennials, along with younger members of Generation X, to be part of what she calls “Generation Me”. Twenge attributes millennials with the traits of confidence and tolerance, but also describes a sense of entitlement and narcissism, based on NPI surveys showing increased narcissism among millennials compared to preceding generations when they were teens and in their twenties. Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett of Clark University, Worcester has criticized Twenge’s research on narcissism among millennials, stating “I think she is vastly misinterpreting or over-interpreting the data, and I think it’s destructive”. He doubts that the Narcissistic Personality Inventory really measures narcissism at all. Arnett says that not only are millennials less narcissistic, they’re “an exceptionally generous generation that holds great promise for improving the world”. A study published in 2017 in the journal Psychological Science found a small decline in narcissism among young people since the 1990s.

According to a 2019 report from the American College of Cardiology, the prevalence of heart attacks among Americans under the age of 40 increased by an average rate of two percent per year in the previous decade. About one in five patients suffered from a heart attack came from this age group. This is despite the fact that Americans in general were less likely to suffer from heart attacks than before, due in part to a decline in smoking. The consequences of having a heart attack were much worse for young patients who also had diabetes. Besides the common risk factors of heart attacks, namely diabetes, high blood pressure, and family history, young patients also reported marijuana and cocaine intake, but less alcohol consumption.A variety of names have emerged in various European countries hard hit following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 to designate young people with limited employment and career prospects. These groups can be considered to be more or less synonymous with millennials, or at least major sub-groups in those countries. The Generation of €700 is a term popularized by the Greek mass media and refers to educated Greek twixters of urban centers who generally fail to establish a career. In Greece, young adults are being “excluded from the labor market” and some “leave their country of origin to look for better options”. They are being “marginalized and face uncertain working conditions” in jobs that are unrelated to their educational background, and receive the minimum allowable base salary of €700 per month. This generation evolved in circumstances leading to the Greek debt crisis and some participated in the 2010–2011 Greek protests. In Spain, they are referred to as the mileurista (for €1,000 per month), in France “The Precarious Generation,” and as in Spain, Italy also has the “milleurista”; generation of €1,000 (per month).

Despite the fact that educators and political leaders, such as President Barack Obama, have been trying to years to improve the quality of STEM education in the United States, and that various polls have demonstrated that more students are interested in these subjects, graduating with a STEM degree is a different kettle of fish altogether. According to The Atlantic, 48% of students majoring in STEM dropped out of their programs between 2003 and 2009. Data collected by the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) in 2011 showed that although these students typically came in with excellent high school GPAs and SAT scores, among science and engineering students, including pre-medical students, 60% changed their majors or failed to graduate, twice the attrition rate of all other majors combined. Despite their initial interest in secondary school, many university students find themselves overwhelmed by the reality of a rigorous STEM education. Some are mathematically unskilled, while others are simply lazy. The National Science Board raised the alarm all the way back in the mid-1980s that students often forget why they wanted to be scientists and engineers in the first place. Many bright students had an easy time in high school and failed to develop good study habits. In contrast, Chinese, Indian, and Singaporean students are exposed to mathematics and science at a high level from a young age. Moreover, according education experts, many mathematics schoolteachers were not as well-versed in their subjects as they should be, and might well be uncomfortable with mathematics. Given two students who are equally prepared, the one who goes to a more prestigious university is less likely to graduate with a STEM degree than the one who attends a less difficult school. Competition can defeat even the top students. Meanwhile, grade inflation is a real phenomenon in the humanities, giving students an attractive alternative if their STEM ambitions prove too difficult to achieve. Whereas STEM classes build on top of each other—one has to master the subject matter before moving to the next course—and have black and white answers, this is not the case in the humanities, where things are a lot less clear-cut.

A 2004 Gallup poll of Americans aged 13 to 17 found that 71% said their social and political views were more or less the same as those of their parents. 21% thought they were more liberal and 7% more conservative. According to demographer and public policy analyst Philip Longman, “even among baby boomers, those who wound up having children have turned out to be remarkably similar to their parents in their attitudes about “family” values.” In the postwar era, most returning servicemen looked forward to “making a home and raising a family” with their wives and lovers, and for many men, family life was a source of fulfillment and a refuge from the stress of their careers. Life in the late 1940s and 1950s was centered about the family and the family was centered around children. Researchers found that while only 9% of teenagers who identified with the Republican Party considered themselves more conservative than their parents, compared to 77% who shared their parents’ views, 25% of adolescents who identified with the Democratic Party and 28% of politically independent teens said they were more liberal than their parents. Another 2004 Gallup poll of the same age group found that a clear majority of teenagers considered themselves to be politically moderate, 56%. Only 7% and 18% deemed themselves very conservative or conservative, respectively, and 10% and 6% believed they were liberal or very liberal, respectively. (The bar plot roughly resembles a Gaussian distribution or an isosceles triangle centered around moderates. See right.) By comparing with a 2004 poll of Americans aged 18 and over, Gallup discovered that teens were substantially more moderate than adults (56% to 38%), less conservative (25% to 40%), and just about as liberal (16% to 19%). However, political scientist Elias Dinas discovered, by studying the results from the Political Socialisation Panel Study and further data from the United Kingdom and the United States, that while children born to politically engaged parents tended to be politically engaged themselves, those who absorbed their parents’ views the earliest were also the most likely to abandon them later in life. Singapore’s birth rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 since the 1980s before stabilizing by during the 2000s and 2010s. (It reached 1.14 in 2018, making it the lowest since 2010 and one of the lowest in the world.) Government incentives such as the baby bonus have proven insufficient to raise the birth rate. Singapore’s experience mirrors those of Japan and South Korea. In many countries, people have since the mid-twentieth century been increasingly looking for mates of the same socio
economic status and educational attainment. The phenomenon of preferring mates with characteristics similar to one’s own is known as assortative mating. Part of the reason growing economic and educational assortative mating was economic in nature. Innovations which became commercially available in the late twentieth century such as the washing machine and frozen food reduced the amount of time people needed to spend on housework, which diminished the importance of domestic skills. Moreover, by the early 2000s, it was less feasible for a couple with one spouse having no more than a high-school diploma to earn about the national average; on the other hand, couples both of whom had at least a bachelor’s degree could expect to make a significant amount above the national average. People thus had a clear economic incentive to seek out a mate with at least as high a level of education in order to maximize their potential income. Another incentive for this kind of assortative mating lies in the future of the offspring. People have since the mid-twentieth century increasingly wanted intelligent and well-educated children, and marrying bright people who make a lot of money goes a long way in achieving that goal. Couples in the early twenty-first century tend to hold egalitarian rather than traditional views on gender roles. Modern marriage is more about companionship rather than bread-winning for the man and homemaking for the woman. American and Chinese youths are increasingly choosing whether or not to marry according to their personal preferences rather than family, societal, or religious expectations.As is the case with many European countries, empirical evidence poses real challenges to the popular argument that the surge of nationalism and populism is an ephemeral phenomenon due to “angry white old men” who would inevitably be replaced by younger and more liberal voters. Especially since the 1970s, working-class voters, who had previously formed the backbone of support for the New Deal introduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, have been turning away from the left-leaning Democratic Party in favor of the right-leaning Republican Party. As the Democratic Party attempted to make itself friendlier towards the university-educated and women during the 1990s, more blue-collar workers and non-degree holders left. Political scientist Larry Bartels argued because about one quarter of Democrat supporters held social views more in-tune with Republican voters and because there was no guarantee millennials would maintain their current political attitudes due to life-cycle effects, this process of political re-alignment would likely continue. As is the case with Europe, there are potential pockets of support for national populism among younger generations. By analyzing data from the United Nations and the Global Talent Competitive Index, KDM Engineering found that as of 2019, the top five countries for international high-skilled workers are Switzerland, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden. Factors taken into account included the ability to attract high-skilled foreign workers, business-friendliness, regulatory environment, the quality of education, and the standard of living. Switzerland is best at retaining talents due to its excellent quality of life. Singapore is home to a world-class environment for entrepreneurs. And the United States offers the most opportunity for growth due to the sheer size of its economy and the quality of higher education and training. As of 2019, these are also some of the world’s most competitive economies, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). In order to determine a country or territory’s economic competitiveness, the WEF considers factors such as the trustworthiness of public institutions, the quality of infrastructure, macro-economic stability, the quality of healthcare, business dynamism, labor market efficiency, and innovation capacity. For young Chinese couples in general, the cost of living, especially the cost of housing in the big cities, is a serious obstacle to marriage. In addition, Chinese millennials are less keen on marrying than their predecessors as a result of cultural change.Though it is often said that millennials ignore conventional advertising, they are in fact heavily influenced by it. They are particularly sensitive to appeals to transparency, to experiences rather than things, and flexibility. In fact, millennials have benefited the least from the economic recovery following the Great Recession, as average incomes for this generation have fallen at twice the general adult population’s total drop and are likely to be on a path toward lower incomes for at least another decade. According to a Bloomberg L.P., “Three and a half years after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the earnings and employment gap between those in the under-35 population and their parents and grandparents threatens to unravel the American dream of each generation doing better than the last. The nation’s younger workers have benefited least from an economic recovery that has been the most uneven in recent history.” Despite higher college attendance rates than Generation X, many were stuck in low-paid jobs, with the percentage of degree-educated young adults working in low-wage industries rising from 23% to 33% between 2000 and 2014. Not only did they receive lower wages, they also had to work longer hours for fewer benefits. By the mid-2010s, it had already become clear that the U.S. economy was evolving into a highly dynamic and increasingly service-oriented system, with careers getting replaced by short-term full-time jobs, full-time jobs by part-time positions, and part-time positions by income-generating hobbies. In one important way the economic prospects of millennials are similar to those of their parents the baby boomers: their huge number means that the competition for jobs was always going to be intense. A 2013 joint study by sociologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard University found that the decline and disappearance of stable full-time jobs with health insurance and pensions for people who lack a college degree has had profound effects on working-class Americans, who now are less likely to marry and have children within marriage than those with college degrees. Data from a 2014 study of U.S. millennials revealed over 56% of this cohort considers themselves as part of the working class, with only approximately 35% considering themselves as part of the middle class; this class identity is the lowest polling of any generation. A 2020 paper by economists William G. Gale, Hilary Gelfond, Jason J. Fichtner, and Benjamin H. Harris examines the wealth accumulated by different demographic cohorts using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. They find that while the Great Recession has diminished the wealth of all age groups in the short run, a longitudinal analysis reveals that older generations have been able to acquire more wealth whereas millennials have gotten poorer overall. In particular, the wealth of millennials in 2016 was less than that of older generations when they were their age in 1989 and 2007. Millennials enjoy a number of important advantages compared to their elders, such as higher levels of education, and longer working lives, but they suffer some disadvantages including limited prospects of economic growth, leading to delayed home ownership and marriage.

During
the first two decades of the twenty-first century, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, economic activities tended to concentrate in the large metropolitan areas, such as San Francisco, New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney. Productivity increased enormously as knowledge workers agglomerated. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in remote work, more so in developed countries, aided by technology.Millennial population size varies, depending on the definition used. Using its own definition, the Pew Research Center estimated that millennials comprised 27% of the U.S. population in 2014. In the same year, using dates ranging from 1982 to 2004, Neil Howe revised the number to over 95 million people in the U.S. In a 2012 Time magazine article, it was estimated that there were approximately 80 million U.S. millennials. The United States Census Bureau, using birth dates ranging from 1982 to 2000, stated the estimated number of U.S. millennials in 2015 was 83.1 million people.Despite reports of a surge in turnouts among young voters in the 2015 and 2017 United Kingdom general elections, statistical scrutiny by the British Elections Study revealed that the margin of error was too large to determine whether or not there was a significant increase or decrease in the number of young participants. In both cases, turnouts among those aged 18 to 24 was between 40% and 50%. Winning the support of young people does not necessarily translate to increasing young voters’ turnouts, and positive reactions on social media may not lead to success at the ballot box. Initial reports of a youth surge came from constituency-level survey data, which has a strong chance of over-representing voters rather than the Kingdom as a whole. In addition, higher turnouts generally came from constituencies where there were already large proportions of young people, both toddlers and young adults, and such surges did not necessarily come from young voters. In 2017, there was indeed an increase in overall voter turnout, but only by 2.5%. A consistent trend in the U.K. and many other countries is that older people are more likely to vote than their younger countrymen, and they tend to vote for more right-leaning (or conservative) candidates.In 2019, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published research (using data from the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances) demonstrating that after controlling for race and age cohort families with heads of household with post-secondary education who were born before 1980 there have been wealth and income premiums, while for families with heads of household with post-secondary education but born after 1980 the wealth premium has weakened to point of statistical insignificance (in part because of the rising cost of college) and the income premium while remaining positive has declined to historic lows (with more pronounced downward trajectories with heads of household with postgraduate degrees). Quantitative historian Peter Turchin noted that the United States was overproducing university graduates—he termed this elite overproduction—in the 2000s and predicted, using historical trends, that this would be one of the causes of political instability in the 2020s, alongside income inequality, stagnating or declining real wages, growing public debt. According to Turchin, intensifying competition among graduates, whose numbers were larger than what the economy could absorb, leads to political polarization, social fragmentation, and even violence as many become disgruntled with their dim prospects despite having attained a high level of education. He warned that the turbulent 1960s and 1970s could return, as having a massive young population with university degrees was one of the key reasons for the instability of the past. High taxes and high cost of living are also reasons why people are leaving entire states behind. As is the case with cities, young people are the most likely to relocate. For example, a 2019 poll by Edelman Intelligence of 1,900 residents of California found that 63% of millennials said they were thinking about leaving the Golden State and 55% said they wanted to do so within five years. 60% of millennials said the reason why they wanted to move as the cost and availability of housing. In 2018, the median home price in California was US$547,400, about twice the national median. California also has the highest marginal income tax rate of all U.S. states, 12%, plus a subcharge of 1% for those earning a million dollars a year or more. Popular destinations include Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas, according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. By analyzing data provided by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), finance company SmartAsset found that for wealthy millennials, defined as those no older than 35 years of age earning at least US$100,000 per annum, the top states of departure were New York, Illinois, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, while the top states of destination were California, Washington State, Texas, Colorado, and Florida. SmartAsset also found that the cities with the largest percentages of millennial homeowners in 2018 were Anchorage, AK; Gilbert and Peoria, AZ; Palmdale, Moreno Valley, Hayward, and Garden Grove, CA; Cape Floral, FL; Sioux Falls, SD; and Midland, TX. Among these cities, millennial home-owning rates were between 57% (Gilbert, AZ) and 34% (Hayward, CA). The median price of a home purchased by millennials in 2019 was $256,500, compared to $160,600 for Generation Z. Broadly speaking, the two demographic cohorts are migrating in opposite directions, with the millennials moving North and Generation Z going South. According to the Brookings Institution, the number of American mothers who never married ballooned between 1968, when they were extremely rare, and 2008, when they became much more common, especially among the less educated. In particular, in 2008, the number of mothers who never married with at least 16 years of education was 3.3%, compared to 20.1% of those who never graduated from high school. Unintended pregnancies were also higher among the less educated.According to a 2018 report from Cancer Research UK, millennials in the United Kingdom are on track to have the highest rates of overweight and obesity, with current data trends indicating millennials will overtake the Baby boomer generation in this regard, making millennials the heaviest generation since current records began. Cancer Research UK reports that more than 70% of millennials will be overweight or obese by ages 35–45, in comparison to 50% of Baby boomers who were overweight or obese at the same ages.In 2019, Canada’s net public debt was C$768 billion. Meanwhile, U.S. public debt amounted to US$22 trillion. The Canadian federal government’s official figure for the debt-to-GDP ratio was 31%. However, this figure left out debts from lower levels of government. Once these were taken into account, the figure jumped to 88%, according to the International Monetary Fund. For comparison, that number was 238% for Japan, 107% for the United States, and 99% for France. Canada’s public debt per person was over CAN$18,000. For Americans, it was US$69,000. Since the Great Recession, Canadian households have accumulated significantly more debt. According to Statistics Canada, the national debt-to-disposable income ratio was 175% in 2019. It was 105% in the U.S. Meanwhile, the national median mortgage debt rose from C$95,400 in 1999 to C$190,000 in 2016 (in 2016 dollars). Numbers are much higher in the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver, and Victoria, B.C.An average Canadian home was worth C$484,500 in 2018. Despite government legislation (mortgage stress test rules), such a price was quite high compared to some decades before. Adjusted for inflation, it was C$210,000 in 1976. Paul Kershaw of the University of British Columbia calculated that the average amount of extra money needed for a down payment in the late 2010s compared to one generation before was equivalent to eating 17 avocado toasts each day for ten years. Meanwhile, the option of renting in a large city
is increasingly out of reach for many young Canadians. In 2019, the average rent in Canada cost C$1,040 a month, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). But, as is always the case in real-estate, location matters. An average two-bedroom apartment cost C$1,748 per month in Vancouver and C$1,547 per month in Toronto, with vacancy rates at about 1.1% and 1.5%, respectively. Canada’s national vacancy rate was 2.4% in 2018, the lowest since 2009. New supply—rental apartment complexes that are newly completed or under construction—has not been able to keep up with rising demand. Besides higher prices, higher interest rates and stricter mortgage rules have made home ownership more difficult. International migration contributes to rising demand for housing, especially rental apartments, according to the CMHC, as new arrivals tend to rent rather than purchase. Moreover, a slight decline in youth unemployment in 2018 also drove up demand. While the Canadian housing market is growing, this growth is detrimental to the financial well-being of young Canadians.

The Economist reported in 2013 that surveys of political attitudes among millennials in the United Kingdom revealed that they held more liberal views on social and economic matters than older demographic groups. They favored individual liberty, small government, low taxes, limited welfare programs, and personal responsibility. While support for increased welfare programs for the poor at the cost of potentially higher taxes has declined steadily since the 1980s among all living demographic cohorts in the U.K., Generation Y disapproved of such spending schemes the most, according to data from Ipsos MORI and the British Social Attitudes Survey. On the other hand, they had a more relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and the legalization of drugs. They disliked immigration, though less than their elders. They were more likely than their elders to support public debt reduction. They cared about the environment, but not at the expense of economic prosperity, and they supported privatizing utilities. In other words, they were classical liberals or libertarians. Ipsos pollster Ben Page told The Economist, “Every successive generation is less collectivist than the last.”Gallup polls conducted in 2019 revealed that 62% of people aged 18 to 29—older members of Generation Z and younger millennials—support giving women access to abortion while 33% opposed. In general, the older someone was, the less likely that they supported abortion. 56% of people aged 65 or over did not approve of abortion compared to 37% who did. (See chart to the right.) Gallup found in 2018 that nationwide, Americans are split on the issue of abortion, with equal numbers of people considering themselves “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, 48%.The cohorts born during the cusp years before and after millennials have been identified as “microgenerations” with characteristics of both generations. Names given to these cuspers include Xennials, Generation Catalano, the Oregon Trail Generation; Zennials and Zillennials, respectively.

Despite the availability of affordable housing, and broadband Internet, the possibility of telecommuting, the reality of high student loan debts and the stereotype of living in their parents’ basement, millennials were steadily leaving rural counties for urban areas for lifestyle and economic reasons in the early 2010s. At that time, millennials were responsible for the so-called “back-to-the-city” trend. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of Americans living in urban areas grew from 79% to 81% while that in rural areas dropped from 21% to 19%. At the same time, many new cities were born, especially in the Midwest, and others, such as Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas, were growing enormously. According to demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution, the population of young adults (18–34 years of age) in U.S. urban cores increased 5% between 2010 and 2015, the bulk of which can be attributed to ethnic-minority millennials. In fact, this demographic trend was making American cities and their established suburbs more ethnically diverse. On the other hand, white millennials were the majority in emerging suburbs and exurbs. Mini-apartments, initially found mainly in Manhattan, became more and more common in other major urban areas as a strategy for dealing with high population density and high demand for housing, especially among people living alone. The size of a typical mini-apartment is 300 square feet (28 square meters), or roughly the size of a standard garage and one eighth the size of an average single-family home in the U.S. as of 2013. Many young city residents were willing to give up space in exchange for living in a location they liked. Such apartments are also common in Tokyo and some European capitals. Data from the Census Bureau reveals that in 2018, 34% of American adults below the age of 35 owned a home, compared to the national average of almost 64%.

Millennials struggle with dental and oral health. More than 30% of young adults have untreated tooth decay (the highest of any age group), 35% have trouble biting and chewing, and some 38% of this age group find life in general “less satisfying” due to teeth and mouth problems.Oxford Living Dictionaries describes a millennial as a person “born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines millennial as “a person born in the 1980s or 1990s.”According to the Pew Research Center, young people are more likely to ride public transit. In 2016, 21% of adults aged 18 to 21 took public transit on a daily, almost daily, or weekly basis. By contrast, this number of all U.S. adults was 11%. Nationwide, about three quarters of American commuters drive their own cars. Also according to Pew, 51% of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 used Lyft or Uber in 2018 compared to 28% in 2015. That number for all U.S. adults were 15% in 2015 and 36% in 2018. In general, users tend to be urban residents, young (18–29), university graduates, and high income earners ($75,000 a year or more). A 2015 study by Microsoft found that 77% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said yes to the statement, “When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone,” compared to just 10% for those aged 65 and over. Economic prospects for some millennials have declined largely due to the Great Recession in the late 2000s. Several governments have instituted major youth employment schemes out of fear of social unrest due to the dramatically increased rates of youth unemployment. In Europe, youth unemployment levels were very high (56% in Spain, 44% in Italy, 35% in the Baltic states, 19% in Britain and more than 20% in many more countries). In 2009, leading commentators began to worry about the long-term social and economic effects of the unemployment.Statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveal that between 2014 and 2019, Japan’s unemployment rate went from about 4% to 2.4% and China’s from almost 4.5% to 3.8%. These are some of the lowest rates among the largest economies of the world. However, due to long-running sub-replacement fertility, Japan had just over two workers per retiree in the 2010s, compared to four in North America. As a result, the country faces economic stagnation and serious financial burden to support the elderly. China’s economy was growing at a feverish pace between the late 1970s till the early 2010s, when demographic constraints made themselves felt. Key to China’s “economic miracle” was its one-child policy, which curbed population growth and enabled the economy to industrialize rapidly. Yet the policy has also led to population aging. Political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argued that China’s working population peaked in 2014. Even so, economist Brad Setser suggested that China can still increase its GDP per capita by raising the age of retirement and making it easier for people to migrate from rural to urban areas. But social scientist Wang Feng warned that as the population ages, social welfare spending as a share of GDP will also grow, intensifying sociopolitical problems. During the mid-2010s, China had five workers for every retiree. But if current trends continue, by the 2040s, that ratio will fall to just 1.6.

A 2021 report noted that the popular conception of British Millennials relationship with politics changed around the late 2010s from indifference to left-wing, socially liberal attitudes or “millennial socialism”. The report which examined polling of millennials and adult Generation Z members political attitudes found clear negativity towards the idea of capitalism and positivity towards the idea of socialism in the abstract. There was also strong support for various socialist arguments though capitalist counter-arguments often also received plurality support. Commentators sometimes suggest that these attitudes are a natural aspect of youth which will pass as these people age though their some evidence against this. A analysis a British Election Study results for the 1964 to 2019 general elections found that whilst earlier age groups became more likely to vote Conservative as they got older millennials did not appear to be progressing in the same direction and an article on the analysis described them as “by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.” The 2021 report also commented on this argument that:

Living in the digital age, Millennial parents have taken plenty of photographs of their children, and have chosen both digital storage (e.g. Dropbox) or physical photo albums to preserve their memories.

Even though the majority of strokes affect people aged 65 or older and the probability of having a stroke doubles only every decade after the age of 55, anyone can suffer from a stroke at any age. A stroke occurs when the blood supply to the brain is disrupted, causing neurons to die within minutes, leading to irreparable brain damage, disability, or even death. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), strokes are the fifth leading cause of death and a major factor behind disability in the United States. According to the National Strokes Association, the risk of having a stroke is increasing among young adults (those in their 20s and 30s) and even adolescents. During the 2010s, there was a 44% increase in the number of young people hospitalized for strokes. Health experts believe this development is due to a variety of reasons related to lifestyle choices, including obesity, smoking, alcoholism, and physical inactivity. Obesity is also linked to hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol levels. CDC data reveals that during the mid-2000s, about 28% of young Americans were obese; this number rose to 36% a decade later. Up to 80% of strokes can be prevented by making healthy lifestyle choices while the rest are due to factors beyond a person’s control, namely age and genetic defects (such as congenital heart disease). In addition, between 30% and 40% of young patients suffered from cryptogenic strokes, or those with unknown causes.

In a 2009 report, Flynn analyzed the results of the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test for British fourteen-year-olds from 1980 to 2008. He discovered that their average IQ had dropped by more than two points during that time period. Among those in the higher half of the intelligence distribution, the decline was even more significant, six points. This is a clear case of the reversal of the Flynn effect, the apparent rise in IQ scores observed during the twentieth century. Flynn suspected that this was due to changes in British youth culture. He further noted that in the past, IQ gains had been correlated with socioeconomic class, but this was no longer true.