General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It seems like there's a lot of dislike and contempt for "boomers" from "millennials" [View all]magical thyme
(14,881 posts)What you mean to say is that there will be data on both sides of the mean. That data may or may not fall outside of one or more standard deviations.
On the other hand, there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics. For example, within the general claim of millenials supposedly being the first generation to ever be worse off than their parents, there is the arbitrary cut off dates used to define each generation. Had the cutoff dates been different, for example, had the 2nd wave of baby boomers and the first part of the next generation been lumped together, we may have ended up the first generation of baby boomers to be worse off than out parents.
Studies have shown that if you enter the job market in a deep recession and experience a "lost decade" at the start of your working life, as I did, and as the millenials have, then you will never really catch up.
Secondly, that claim does not define what makes up "worse off" versus "better off." For example, who is "worse off?" I have no health insurance (and haven't for most of my working career), but I have largely good health. My sister has had health insurance from day one, but has had a string of (largely self inflicted) health issues throughout her life and now has recurrent triple-negative breast cancer.