'We young people need to change our expectations. The perfect economic moment that the boomers experienced will never happen again'

Being young these days is not easy. I see this when I talk to my children and their friends.

Many people send out hundreds of resumes and are rejected by algorithms. Buying a house is unaffordable - and the cost of having children seems even greater.

Recently, I've been reminiscing about my time as a young adult.

I graduated from university in 1988 and went straight into a job, with a good salary.

By the following year, I had saved enough to put a down payment on my first house. And before I turned 30, I had my first child.

When I look at the experiences of young people today, I sometimes feel like I grew up on another planet, not in another generation.

Whose fault is it that building life has become so difficult?

I've been asking this question a lot. And I reached out to Kyla Scanlon to get some answers.

Scanlon is an American economics writer and content creator with a huge social media presence . She is 27 years old and founded her own personal finance education company called Bread.

In 2022, she coined the term vibecession , in English, to define the state of the American economy during the government of former President Joe Biden (2021-2025).

Many of his followers are young people seeking answers about their finances. His latest book is In this Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work.

Our conversation focused on the question of how life has become so financially unsustainable for young people, especially in the United States. And whether there is a clear answer as to why and what can be done to resolve this situation.

If you're young, or have a young person in your life, you need to read our conversation below, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Katty Kay (BBC): Let's start with what seems to be a kind of tension between people about how the economy works for each of them.

Here's the picture: I'm 60 years old. You're not 60 years old.

I graduated from university in 1988. I went straight from university into a reasonably well-paid job in the British civil service.

When I was 29, I had my first child. At the time, I didn't think, 'Oh my God, I'll never be able to support him.' But when I look at my children and their friends, it's almost another planet.

Kyla Scanlon: I'm 27 years old and I basically graduated during the pandemic.

What you are saying seems very distant from me and the people I know.

For older people, there was kind of an equation to follow. Housing was much cheaper. Education had a more predictable return. Everything wasn't so expensive.

Of course, every generation has its own challenges, but the younger generation now, under 30, faces an immense struggle in terms of buying a home, saving money, the job market, inflation, a global pandemic that has hurt many young adults.

So I think it's been a challenge.

Kay: You look at what I had and you think, 'What do you mean you just took it all?'

Were we the generation that took everything for ourselves and kind of left you with nothing? Did we deliberately do something to hurt you?

Scanlon: This is a generalization - 43% of baby boomers [born between 1946 and 1964] have no retirement savings, right?

If I come along and say, 'Oh, all the boomers got all the money,' no!

Some of them have done this. They've had a nice run in the stock market, housing costs have probably gone up four, maybe five times, in the last two decades, and they refuse to sell those houses.

There are more baby boomers who own three bedrooms than there are millennials who own three bedrooms. And you'd think millennials would own these homes because they need them to have families, children and space.

You all faced enormous struggles as well, but you started life at basically a perfect time that we may never see again in history. You were just very, very lucky.

So I think we need to change our expectations and realize that maybe that's not the future. We can't blame the boomers for seizing the opportunity.

Kay: So my generation is the anomaly? That post-war period simply produced extraordinary growth and we were the beneficiaries - whether it was my parents' generation or mine?

Scanlon: Yes, and also upward social mobility.

[French economist] Stefanie Stantcheva at Harvard has done some great research on upward mobility, and it just doesn't exist in the way we used to observe it.

This is the American dream: buy a house, have kids, have a job and live - and I think that's gone away, largely because now the economy is suffering the real repercussions of the post-war expansion that benefited the baby boomers.

Kay: Kyla, was there a point when things started to get worse? Was there something that the government did or didn't do to exacerbate this change?

Scanlon: What happened, on the political side, is that boomers vote, and because they have high representation in politics, they end up designing policies that benefit themselves.

It's simply this decades-long cycle that those in power want to stay in - and these are the incentives put in front of them. They will design things to be this way.

They will fight [affordable] housing because they don't want their homes to be devalued in any way.

Maybe they won't retire at the age we would expect, so as not to lose their leadership position. They will simply stay put, and that creates an element of stagnation for those trying to inherit what comes next.

Baby boomers hold about 73 to 75 percent of all wealth in the United States. They just haven't passed the baton yet.

There are also a lot of regulations and bureaucratic hurdles, so we can't just blame boomers for a lot of things.

But when you look at the United States and you really look at [GDP], this is the richest country in the world, and sometimes it refuses to help its citizens.

In fact, we saw a lot of support during the pandemic, in terms of helping people with rent forbearance and suspending student loan payments.

But in the United States, there is a deadly struggle over how citizens should live. And part of that surely comes from policies that were created by the aging population.

This isn't just caused by boomers, but it has a big impact on how people cope with the economy.

Kay: Does this make you and your generation want to rethink the system? Does it produce a level of cynicism that you think is in danger of becoming permanent?

Scanlon: There's a term called financial nihilism. Basically, it's the idea that people have completely given up on saving for retirement.

They gave up on advancing their careers because they didn't think there was a future for them.

This worries me a lot. If we lose hope, what happens next? What do you do to help people regain it?

What can you give them to give them hope if the system doesn't provide the opportunities they hoped for?

[American journalist and author] David Brooks published a great article in The New York Times about the economics of rejection - and the endless rejection, from dating apps, from colleges and from jobs.

Simply put, the constant rejection and the cognitive load it brings. And how it can really eliminate any sense of hope in people.

I worry about this a lot.

Kay: Is there any country in the world that is doing the right thing - or at least handling the situation better - that we could use as an example?

Scanlon: We can learn from all kinds of countries.

I think the United States really needs to review its social safety net, and Europe is a relatively good example in this area.

Many countries are struggling to decide what to do with their young people, as they now live much longer in developed countries.

Austria has done a very good job in building housing. They have social housing, that's all. Could we just help people get their own homes?

Kay: When you look at what could change in terms of policies, what would you like to point to?

Scanlon: It's a simple answer, but we need to define zoning and housing. We need to build housing. This is just one way we can get out of this.

Another issue is the cost of daycare, which has really skyrocketed in the United States.

It’s hard to imagine how we’re going to cover these costs, but it’s an important point. If we want to encourage people to have children and continue building their lives in the United States, we need to address the cost of child care.

Another issue is the cost of elderly care. Taking care of an elderly person [in the United States] costs on average, I think, about $10,000 [about R$55,500] a month. It's also very difficult to imagine how to afford that.

If we think about just sort of stabilizing the population, we need to give them a place to live, help them have children, and take care of our elderly population as people move on to whatever comes next. I would focus on those three things.

Read the original version of this story (in English) on the BBC Business website .