Are millennials really the first generation to do worse than their parents?

Millennials are the most educated generation in American history. On the surface, that seems like a good thing. But college and grad school cost money -- increasingly insane amounts of money. The price of attending a public four-year college rose 54 percent from 1998 to 2008 while the typical American household earned less in 2008 than it did a decade earlier, adjusted for inflation [sources: College Board, Leonhardt]. Therefore, to pay for the education touted by parents, teachers and the government as critical to future success, millennials took on massive debt, a record-breaking $35,200 on average for each 2013 U.S. college graduate [source: Ellis].

Student debt isn't necessarily a bad thing if there are well-paying jobs waiting for college graduates. Oops! Millennials had the poorly timed misfortune of graduating in the middle of the worst economic collapse since 1929. The Great Recession forced companies to downsize or at least stop hiring. The U.S. unemployment rate went from 4.4 percent in 2007 to a crippling 10 percent in 2009 and remains more than 7 percent in 2013 [source: Bureau of Labor Statistics]. When jobs become scarce, competition gets fierce. Millennials fresh out of college have to compete with applicants who have 10 years of experience but are willing to take lower-paying jobs out of desperation.

But this is only a blip, right? Statistics show that the economy is slowly improving, and unemployment numbers are slowly falling. Can't millennials make up for lost income? Not according to the experts. Yale economist Lisa Kahn found that people who graduated from college during the deep recession of the early 1980s earned $100,000 less over the next 20 years than their older and younger colleagues [source: Thompson]. That early unemployment spike and wage decrease scarred them for life.

But perhaps the biggest economic forces working against millennials -- and younger Generation Xers, too -- are income stagnation and the wealth gap. From 1950 to 2000, the average household income of American families steadily rose. From 2000 to 2010, when many millennials entered the workforce, median household incomes fell for the first time since World War II [source: Leonhardt]. It's hard to make more money than your parents when jobs are paying less for the same work. (Insult to injury: Worker productivity is up 37.6 percent since 1995, but median real wages only rose 9.6 percent [source: Reeve]).

The wealth gap between older and younger people has also widened significantly over the past 30 years. A 30-year-old in 2013 is worth 21 percent less than a 30-year-old in 1983. Meanwhile, the net worth of the average 60-year-old today is more than twice as high as 1983 [source: Lowrey]. In other words, young people keep getting poorer, while old folks get richer. Demographers point to skyrocketing college tuition for younger generations, higher unemployment, sinking home values and middle-class income stagnation [source: Yen].

These broad economic trends have nothing to do with narcissism, entitlement or Twitter. But taken together, they add up to ballooning debt, fewer well-paying jobs for college graduates and bleak long-term career prospects for millennials. Wouldn't you move into your parents' basement, too?

Keep reading for a glimmer of hope.

Millennials certainly think so. In its landmark 2010 survey of millennials, Pew Research found millennials in general to be an optimistic and confident bunch, even in the face of economic uncertainty. For example, even though 68 percent of millennials said they were not earning enough money to lead the kind of lives they wanted right now, a full 88 percent believed that they would earn enough in the future [source: Pew Research Center].

Key to this question, perhaps, is its wording, "Do you now earn enough money to lead the kind of life you want, or not?" The Pew survey found that the youngest generation is surprisingly old-school in its life priorities: Millennials chiefly want to be good parents, raise happy children and give back to society. How much money is "enough" to meet those admirable, but not necessarily expensive goals? That amount will likely be different for everybody.

Which brings us back to the original question: Will millennials be the first generation to do worse than their parents? While we're parsing sentences, maybe it's time to re-examine our definition of "worse." If income and personal wealth are our only metric for measuring success, there's a very good chance that millennials will fall short of the financial gains made by their parents.

But what if we follow the lead of several prominent global economists and change the success metric from Gross National Product to Gross National Happiness? When Columbia University's Earth Institute assembles its annual World Happiness Report, it considers much more than median household income, but also community trust, physical and mental health, and general life satisfaction [source: Helliwell et al.]. On that list, the United States came in 17th in 2013, slightly worse than Mexico (No. 16) and well behind our northern neighbor Canada (No. 6) [source: McCafferty]. In the Pew survey and others, millennials tend to prioritize happiness and personal satisfaction over job title and salary. Look out, Canada.

For lots more information about millennials and other generations, check out the related HowStuffWorks articles on the next page.