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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Because they are the first American generation significantly economically worse off than their parents.

Even US life expectancy is dropping, as are average IQ’s.

Is life expectancy dropping because millennials are dying? My understanding is that it's due largely to the opioid crisis, which mostly affects people in older generations.

Also obesity.

My anecdata is that I know 4 people from my graduating class who are dead today because of opioids. I don't know what the rates are, but it definitely affects the young as well.

The opioid crisis isn't limited to older generations, it's definitely impacting millenials as well[0]. The millenials that are most likely to be impacted just tend to be from more economically depressed areas.

0: https://qz.com/1169672/us-millennials-were-almost-20-more-li...

Depending on the source the millennial generation is usually considered to start around 1980-82, making them currently 36-38. Speaking only for myself (age 34) I've seen and heard about many people that I grew up with getting caught up in opioid addiction.

The first first, or the first since the prosperity boom in the middle of the 20th century? The generation that went through the Depression surely was worse off than their parents.

Great Depression was followed and preceded by extreme economic growth. So, they where still better off over time.

The depth of the depression the US per capita GDP only dropped to ~1920 levels. (Industrialization is a hell of a drug.) It recovered by the end of the depression and the 40's was a massive boom.

You really want a logarithmic scale to do these kind of comparisons over time. But even that misses the kind of structural changes that are really harming Millennials specifically.

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