Analysis: Pensions that were promised in the past and seemed ordinary at the time are hurting the millennials

“Life is better now than at almost any time in history,” wrote the 2015 Nobel prize-winning economist, Angus Deaton, in the opening line of his most recent book. But just try telling that to anyone between the age of 21 and 35 in the western world.

Generation Y: a guide to a much-maligned demographic Read more

Today we reveal the true economic plight of Generation Y and how a combination of debt, joblessness, globalisation, demographics and rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented inequality between generations. But why?

Millennials are picking up the tab for the western world’s most stunning accounting disaster to date. No one expected people to live as long as they are, and in such great numbers. Pensions that were promised in the past, and seemed ordinary at the time, are now onerously over-generous, and that is hurting young adults today.



Jonathan Gardner, a senior (Generation X) economist at Willis Towers Watson, one of the world’s largest insurance brokers and pension advisory services, said the retired are hoovering up so much cash there is no money left for salary increases.



Gardener said: “For various reasons, not enough was paid in, in the past, which is leaving deficits and the company [employer] has to pay. People say the company should pay this and the company should pay that, but it’s like most things: if the company is paying something, the money comes from somewhere, and it tends to affect workers.”



In the end, said Gardner: “It’s the young who are bearing the burden of those past [pension] mistakes.”



Democratic imbalance

Pensioner demands are not just beating down the financial prospects of new employees. Retirees are also winning more from governments than they did a generation ago. Our figures show double-digit, real-terms growth in social transfers – what governments give out – over 30 years to pensioners aged 65-79, ranging from as low as 26% in Germany to 146% in the UK.



And once again, young people are the ones paying the price. Laurence Kotlikoff (baby boomer), a professor of economics at Boston University, is astounded at what has happened, especially in America. “The US is out to bankrupt its children.”

The former head of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that although he believed the issue was paramount, he firmly believed it was not the job of central banks to address it. “The types of policies relevant to changing demographics are mostly fiscal in nature, and are consequently Congress’s responsibility,” he said.

There is of course the flip side to these startling shifts in demography. In most countries in the set studied by the Guardian, young adults are now a smaller part of the workforce than was the case 30 years ago. Theoretically, this should have resulted in a rise in millennial wages, says James Pomeroy (Generation Y), an HSBC economist who published a report on demography last year. Fewer workers means more bargaining power with employers, he said.

However, this has all been turned on its head by globalisation. In the past 30 years, liberalisation has allowed companies to outsource aggressively. Everything from telephone helplines to legal services to computer programmers are now being provided by outsourcing companies in countries such as India or China.

“That global workforce is easier to tap than ever,” said Pomeroy. “That means it’s not so good for your ‘in-demand’ 25-year-old.” The result: a slump in real wages over the past three decades for 25 to 29 year olds in several countries.

Once again it is only Generation Y suffering this fate. Using figures from 2010, most five-year cohorts from 40 to 65 posted positive pay growth compared with people of the same age 30 years earlier. In the US, Spain and Italy, the older you are in the workplace, the higher those wage increases have been.

The consequences

All this prompts an immediate question about the sustainability of economic growth as a whole. For example, what will happen to consumption?



Middle-aged western consumers who are at the peak of their earning potential have been the central plank in the development of the world’s postwar economy. They have been key to purchasing all sorts of goods from washing machines, microwaves, cars and houses, to life insurance, as well as putting money away in savings.

It’s their appetite for more that has powered global growth for decades. What then happens in a few years when millennials get older and don’t have the disposable income to repeat the same purchasing exercise? Some economists believe that the effects of this are already playing out and, as a result, the developed world’s economies may now be grinding to a halt.



Prof Diane Coyle, the author of The Economics of Enough and a former adviser to the Treasury, agrees that the underlying facts are blunt. Older people, she said, can’t take all the returns of the stock market. “When you’re a pensioner you can’t eat the stock market, you need young workers in the economy to be creating economic output that’s available for consumption at that time.”



Pomeroy added: “If you have a load of people who are 20, 25 and they are becoming your core consumer over the next 15 to 20 years and they are less well off than the current crop of people in that age group, then that’s not great for growth … you’re in big trouble.”

“We just don’t know whether we can continue growing the economy in the same way we once have.”

Additional reporting by Delphine Robineau