India

Prashant Menghrajani has never had to worry about finding a job. His generation inherited a booming economy in India, with bright prospects for further growth. Globalisation has brought jobs to the east, and at 24 years old, Menghrajani earns more than his parents did when they were his age.

“I’m happy with what I earn, and the work I do, and I see a good future for myself,” Menghrajani says.

Prashant Menghrajani believes life is better for Indian millennials than any generation before. Photograph: Vidhi Doshi

According to the 2011 census, 150 million Indians are aged between 20 and 35. The median age in the country is just 27, compared with 37 in China and 46 in Japan. Generation Y is better educated, has a higher disposable income and is more socially liberal than any generation before. For young people such as Menghrajani, this means more opportunities to travel, work and study abroad, and to buy their own homes.

Though these economic opportunities are not evenly spread across the country, India’s millennials are characterised by an optimism and level of aspiration to match those of America’s baby boomers.

Menghrajani was born in 1991, the year that India experienced a financial crisis and an IMF bailout that forced the country to turn from post-independence socialism to pro-market liberalisation, and opened it up to foreign investments and outsourced jobs in the 90s and 2000s.

His father worked in a middle-income job selling fridges and coolers; his mother in accounting. “It’s not hard to earn more than our parents, because they never earned much in the first place,” he says.

I could easily quit my job and travel … but my parents would never allow me

Menghrajani is one of the luckier ones. After graduating, he got a management-level role at a leading corporate firm. Competition for these opportunities is steep, especially as the population surges.

“Around a million people took the same engineering exam as I did, and of those only 20,000 would pass the exam. If you get into that top 2%, you’ll have no problem getting a job. The pressure is intense.”

But even for those who don’t do well at school, a support system exists. Parents in India have always been willing to provide for their children a lot longer than their counterparts in the west. Many join family businesses and face no pressure to leave home. Women are not expected to work, though more opportunities are opening up for those who want to.

But the financial stability does not always translate to freedom, because of social pressure to keep earning. “If I wanted to,” Menghrajani says, “I could easily quit my job and travel around the country for a year. But my parents would never allow me to do that, and all our relatives would ask what on earth I was thinking.”

In Mumbai, Menghranjani lives with his grandmother, while many of his friends still live at home. The tradition of three or four generations of a family sharing the same home means that young people often don’t have to spend their wages on rent and can save to start businesses or families of their own.

India’s milliennials are enjoying unprecedented economic and social freedom, but as opportunities increase, so does the pressure to succeed. “We have a lot going for us,” Menghrajani says. “But with technology and more interaction with the west, we’re also more aware of how much more we could have.”

Vidhi Doshi

China

Over a flat white coffee near Beijing’s 17th-century Lama temple, Cindy Feng ponders what it means to be a Chinese millennial.

“For me, I feel anxious and confused,” admits the 26-year-old, who graduated from China’s top language school in 2014 and is unemployed. “I’m just not sure about the future. I’m just not sure how things will go.”

Cindy Feng is worried by her economic future and feels the burden of caring for ageing parents without siblings to help. Photograph: Tom Phillips

Born in the Chinese capital in January 1990, six months after the Tiananmen massacre, Feng is part of the jiulinghou or “post-90s” generation, one of two groups that make up China’s millennials. (The other is the balinghou – “post-80s”).

China’s Generation Y is often portrayed as a group of molly-coddled, self-absorbed, over-privileged, politically unengaged brats. Raised mostly as only children after the one-child policy was introduced in 1979, they have enjoyed opportunities unimaginable to their forebears and grown up at a time of unprecedented prosperity.

Their parents lived through some pretty rough times in the 70s and 80s, and their grandparents lived through Mao

But Eric Fish, the author of China’s Millennials: The Want Generation, believes that definition short changes a diverse 250 million-strong group who are themselves now facing major hurdles as their country’s astonishing economic boom loses steam.

“It is kind of understandable when you look at where the older generations are coming from,” Fish says of the negative stereotypes. “Their parents lived through pretty rough times in the 70s and 80s and their grandparents lived through Mao and the Cultural Revolution, which was just an insane life that I’m sure most young people today can’t imagine.”

“But I think young people have their own pretty unique set of challenges and in a lot of ways things are getting tougher for them than they were even 10, 15 years ago.”

Perhaps most daunting of all is the looming responsibility of caring for their elderly parents, without the help of siblings, while possibly raising families of their own.

“I think it’s lots of pressure – I can already feel some pressure,” says Feng. “I’d like to make them happy and I think it is my responsibility. But if I had a sibling then I guess the pressure would be much less and I’d probably have more freedom to do other things.”

Chinese millennials also face many of the same problems as their contemporaries in developed countries, such as soaring property prices and a dearth of job opportunities. Last year nearly 7.5 million students graduated from Chinese universities only to find companies cutting back because of the spluttering economy.

That is now a major concern for China’s unelected rulers, whose legitimacy stems from economic growth.

“On one hand, millennials are becoming bolder, less afraid of authority, less afraid of speaking against the ills that they see in society and less afraid of sticking their necks out to things that they see that are wrong,” says Fish. “And on the other, you have these economics issues that are getting tough for young people. That definitely has to keep China’s leaders awake at night when they see these two trends going hand in hand.”

Feng, who is single and shares a flat in central Beijing with a friend, says her generation is less traditional and more outward-looking than previous ones. Only one in five of her friends has married.





“If I were born in the 60s maybe I would just do what my mum did, which was just take the job I was assigned to and just live my life and be happy about it,” she says. “It’s true that when you have more options sometimes you get confused – but I would say it is better to have an option than to have nothing at all.”

Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Christy Yao

Kenya

There is little question that young adults such as Kalunde Mbuvi, a 26-year-old auditor at global professional services firm Deloitte’s Nairobi office, enjoy far better prospects than their parents’ generation ever did.

Record numbers of Kenyans now have access to higher education, with the number of girls winning entry to university rising at a faster rate than that of boys.

Kalunde Mbuvi Photograph: Stephen Mudiari

Mbuvi, born in a rural part of Kenya, won a place at the highly selective Alliance Girls school, the oldest African girls high school in the country, before doing a degree in business, economics and statistics.

Yet Mbuvi shares the angst felt by many of her peers around the world. Crushingly high interest rates, criticised by the World Bank as a function of an uncompetitive banking industry, mean that getting on to the property ladder is an elusive dream for many young professionals. Despite boasting a middle class that has grown significantly in recent years, there are only 20,000 home loans in Kenya, a stunningly low number for a nation of more than 40 million.

A new consumer class has caught the attention of major global hotel chains and supermarket outlets, which have opened in the Kenyan capital in recent years. Hollywood movies premiere at the same time in Nairobi as they do in major world cities, with cinema chains keen to capitalise on a middle class with globalised tastes.

The flip side, though, are the persistently sharp levels of inequality in the country, which mean that neighbourhoods separated by income levels in Nairobi are marked by startlingly different standards of living.

Concerns about a political class that engages in highly divisive politics is an issue that exercises the minds of many young people, which probably explains why the Kenyan middle class has a savings rate about six times that of its peers in Britain and the US.

“You try to be optimistic about Kenya’s future, although sometimes when you see the antics of our politicians you have to worry,” says Mbuvi.

Even those who have been doing well worry about staying in Kenya and wonder whether they can maximise their potential in a relatively small economy.

“I am happy but restless,” says Mbuvi. “I’m not sure if there are better opportunities in the world out there and that is something I’m keen to explore over time. Despite that, there is a certain contentment which comes from operating in your home country and the feeling you get that you belong.”

Murithi Mutiga

Brazil

When Eduardo Ávila, 25, started an engineering course in his home city, Belo Horizonte, in 2009, he believed he was part of Brazil’s luckiest generation.

The country’s economy escaped most of the pain in the global financial crash and grew by 7.5% in 2010. The hugely popular government expanded welfare programmes and a booming currency made international travel affordable for many young people.

Eduardo Ávila was set to enjoy a career in engineering before a recession rocked Brazil. He is now hoping to become an Uber driver. Photograph: Eduardo Ávila

A series of scholarship, bursary and affirmative action programmes, together with a hugely expanded middle class, boosted universities, with the number of 18- to 24-year-olds in higher education increasing from 32.9% in 2004 to 58.5% in 2014.

Ávila was one of the beneficiaries, receiving a subsidised loan to offset two years of his six-year course at the College of Civil Engineering, which cost R$100,000 (about £19,000) in total. His staggered repayments start at £10 every three months, before reaching £60 a month. He expects the loan to be repaid by 2021.

A budding poet, but attracted to engineering by the prospect of financial stability, for most of his course he remained confident in his employment prospects with the construction industry. As a newly qualified engineer, he could have expected a salary of about R$8,000 a month, easily enough to cover rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Belo Horizonte and expenses.

But towards the end of his course, that dream began to fade. Brazil was hit by its worst recession since the 1930s, with the construction industry particularly damaged by a huge corruption scandal at state oil firm Petrobras.

By 2015, the year he graduated, more workers were being fired than hired in the industry and in July he lost a job as a buyer at a construction company he had held while studying. Since graduating in December, he has not been able to find work as an engineer.

“You study so much and at least expect to be able to work in your area when you finish college,” hesays. “Suddenly, you finish the course and realise it is not the case, no doubt because of the crisis in Brazil. And it is not just me who is living this,” he said.

Now, he plans to begin work as an Uber driver, which he hopes it will eventually pay him R$4,000 a month. He still lives at home, and plans for his own apartment are on ice. He would like to give his parents a contribution to household expenses, but he cannot.

He still believes his generation is in a better position than his parents and grandparents, though, thanks to Brazil’s economic development over recent decades.

“Today we are in crisis, but Brazil is a completely different country than it was 40 years ago,” he said. “At that time, Brazil had no prospect of anything.”

Matt Sandy and Louise Bragado