IN RECENT days there have been a few articles bemoaning the woeful finances of Britain's millennials. For instance, this piece in the Financial Times talks about why millennials (supposedly) go on holiday instead of saving for a pension. Then this article, called "Generation spent", makes a similar sort of argument. As the FT article puts it, "the concept of saving seems so futile, they [millennials] spend freely, insisting on a #yolo lifestyle (translation for oldies—you only live once) despite their restricted means." There is no doubt that Britain's youngsters have seen better days. A recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that "younger cohorts are on course to have less wealth at each point in life than earlier generations did at the same age." Another recent IFS report found that for employees aged 60 and older, median real hourly pay in 2014 was back to its 2008 level, but for those aged 22-29 it was still 9% lower than in 2008.

However, I'm not sure if this means that young people's attitudes to money become quite as fatalistic as many articles suggest (the "I'll never be able to afford a house so I may as well blow everything on a nice holiday" argument). As we pointed out in a recent article on the elderly, in recent years spending on fun things like the cinema, the theatre and eating at restaurants has been growing much faster in older age brackets than in younger ones. That fact is not obviously consistent with young people splurging freely.