千禧一代比父辈更穷？

A few years ago, as everyone focused incessantly on millennials' apparent obsession with avocado toast, a team of researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis got to work investigating something much more serious: millennial wealth.

几年前，当所有人都在持续关注千禧一代对牛油果吐司的明显偏好时，圣路易斯联邦储备银行的一个研究团队开始着手调查一个更为严肃的问题:千禧一代的财富。

They found that the typical millennial household, as of 2016, had only about $28,000 in net worth — putting them 40% behind what previous generations had in wealth at the same age (in inflation-adjusted terms).

他们发现，截至2016年，典型的千禧一代家庭的净资产只有2.8万美元左右，比上几代人在同一年龄时的财富(扣除通胀因素)落后40%。

The data suggested we millennials were becoming a "lost generation," destined to be poorer than the generations that preceded us.

数据显示，我们千禧一代正在成为“迷惘的一代”，注定要比我们的前几代人更贫穷。

Baby boomers and Gen Xers have faced their fair share of calamities — stagflation, the double-dip recession of the 1980s, disco — but millennials have had it really rough.

婴儿潮一代和x一代也面临着各自的灾难——滞胀、上世纪80年代的双底衰退和迪斯科——但千禧一代的日子真的不好过。

Millennials who got college degrees exited school deep in debt and entered a job market ravaged by the Great Recession.

获得大学学位的千禧一代在毕业时债台高筑，又马上进入了受到大萧条重创的就业市场。

Millennials who didn't get college degrees found it harder to get a well-paying, blue-collar job, after trade and automation closed avenues that past generations had used to get to the middle class.

没有大学学位的千禧一代发现，在关闭了过去几代人通往中产阶级的贸易和自动化这两条途径之后，他们更难找到一份高薪的蓝领工作了。

We saw our child-rearing and first-home-buying years — not to mention our ability to work face-to-face — interrupted by a pandemic.

我们看到我们养育孩子和首次购买住房的那些年——更不用说我们面对面工作的机会——被一场疫情中断了。

And all the while we've slogged through an economy muddied by growing inequality, stagnation and a fading American dream.

与此同时，我们在经济中艰难前行，不平等加剧，经济停滞，美国梦也褪色了。

The research team at the St. Louis Fed recently got its hands on some fresher data, which the team crunched to reveal what had happened to millennials in the years since 2016.

圣路易斯联邦储备银行的研究团队最近获得了一些更新鲜的数据，该团队对这些数据进行了分析，以揭示自2016年以来千禧一代的情况。

The team found shockingly different trends within our generation.

研究小组在我们这一代发现了令人震惊的不同趋势。

Some of us have rebounded dramatically in recent years.

我们中的一些人近年来急剧反弹。

Others have fallen further behind.

其他人则远远落在了后面。

Black millennials have had it worst of all:

其中，黑人千禧一代情况是最糟糕的：

They aren't just falling further and further behind white millennials in building wealth for their families — they're falling further and further behind what previous Black generations amassed in wealth.

他们不仅在为自己的家庭积累财富方面越来越落后于千禧一代的白人，而且越来越落后于之前的黑人世代所积累的财富。

Kent and her colleagues found that the typical millennial without a college degree has 19% less family wealth than what previous generations without a degree had when they were the same age.

肯特和她的同事们发现，一般来说，没有大学学历的千禧一代的家庭财富要比同龄没有学历的前几代人少19%。

Millennials who graduated from college, on the other hand, have just 4% less wealth than their similarly educated equivalents in generations past had.

肯特和她的同事们发现，一般来说，没有大学学历的千禧一代的家庭财富要比同龄没有学历的前几代人少19%。

This growing inequality between college and non-college-educated millennials fits into a ginormous amount of other research that shows that today's blue-collar and low-income workers have less upward mobility than they did in previous generations.

上过大学和未受过大学教育的千禧一代之间日益扩大的不平等与大量其他研究相吻合，这些研究表明，今天的蓝领和低收入工人的向上流动性比前几代人更低了。

But the most disturbing finding in their data concerns Black millennials.

但他们的数据中最令人不安的发现是千禧一代的黑人的。

While the typical white millennial family has about $88,000 in wealth, the typical Black millennial family has only about $5,000 in wealth.

典型的千禧一代白人家庭拥有约8.8万美元的财富，而典型的千禧一代黑人家庭只有约5000美元的财富积累。

It gets even worse when you look at the trends.

如果看发展趋势，情形就更糟了。

White millennial families made huge strides between 2016 and 2019, and they now lag previous generations of white families by only about 5%.

2016年至2019年，千禧一代白人家庭取得了巨大进步，现在只落后于前几代白人家庭约5%。

Between 2007 and 2019, however, Black millennials fell further and further behind — not just compared with white millennials, but compared with previous generations of Black Americans.

然而，从2007年到2019年，千禧一代的黑人越来越落后——不仅与白人千禧一代相比，而且是与前几代美国黑人相比。

While white millennials trail the wealth of previous generations of white Americans by only 5%, Black millennials trail previous generations of Black Americans by 52%.

千禧一代的白人财富只比前几代美国白人少5%，而千禧一代的黑人财富却比前几代美国黑人少了52%。

The typical Black millennial has $5,700 less in net worth than counterparts in previous generations.

典型的千禧一代黑人的净资产比前几代人少5700美元。

"That's incredibly shocking, because Black Americans have made great progress in terms of political representation and other measures — but it doesn't seem to be translating into wealth gains," Kent says.

肯特说:“这令人难以置信，因为美国黑人在政治代表权和其他方面取得了巨大的进步，但这似乎并没有转化为财富收益。“

Kent singled out a few potential factors for this disturbing disparity between Black and white millennials.

肯特指出了造成千禧一代黑人和白人之间这种令人不安的差异的几个潜在因素。

First, white millennials are more likely to benefit from having wealthy parents.

首先，白人千禧一代更有可能受益于富有的父母。

Their parents have more resources, for example, to help them with down payments on their first house or to help them pay off their student loans.

他们的父母有更多的资源，例如，可以帮助他们支付第一套房子的首付或帮助他们偿还学生贷款。

About 80% of Black millennials with at least a bachelor's degree still have student loan debt, compared with about half of white millennials.

拥有学士学位以上的千禧一代黑人中，约有80%仍有学生贷款债务，而白人千禧一代中这一比例约为一半。

White millennials are also more likely to own assets like stocks and homes, which have ballooned in value in recent years.

千禧一代的白人也更有可能拥有股票和房产等资产，这些资产的价值近年来急剧上升。

While about two-thirds of white millennials own homes, less than a third of Black millennials own homes.

千禧一代中，约有三分之二的白人拥有住房，而黑人拥有住房的比例不到三分之一。

"I think it's clear in the data that there is a segregated America," Kent says.

“我想，从数据可以明显看出美国的两极分化了。”肯特说。

That has always been true.

而这一直是存在的。

But the troubling story is that, despite racial progress in politics and culture, most Black Americans have yet to see tangible wealth gains.

但令人不安的是，尽管反种族歧视在政治和文化上取得了进步，但大多数美国黑人还没有看到实实在在的财富增长。

Moreover, we should highlight, this data was all collected before the pandemic, which has made racial inequality even worse.

此外，我们应该强调的是，这些数据都是在大流行之前收集的，并且这会使得种族不平等更加严重。

Maybe it's time we stop talking so much about avocado toast, and more about bread and butter.

也许我们是时候停止谈论鳄梨吐司，更多地谈论生计问题了。

问题

文中提到，跟前几代人比，千禧一代的财富状况如何呢？

留言回复正确答案，前五名朋友可以获得红包奖励哦，赶快来试试吧！