People accumulate wealth over a life time of work. It would be entirely expect that younger generations have less wealth than older generations.
This tracks with broad trends of wealth inequality increasing as well.
So no, it's not just "they haven't accumulated yet", because it's not clear they will have the opportunity to do so.
You are right in a sense. But it's still a very bad prognosis.
Source? The data I’ve seen indicate the median millennial is wealthier than the median boomer was at their age.
Boomers held significantly higher percentages of capital than millenials or genx holding age steady.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27123
Studies have shown wealth declining for millenials while increasing for boomers.
https://www.self.inc/info/generational-wealth-gap/
And it's across multiple forms of wealth.
Most of it is earned over time.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/community-development/publication...
Boomers have had significantly longer and better sustained market conditions to grow their wealth.
"While trailing Gen Xers for the beginning of their adult lives, younger American households’ average wealth began to exceed that of Gen Xers at about age 30, reflecting historically high wealth levels following the COVID-19 pandemic." I have a feeling that average wealth adjustment falls very heavily on the home owners, which is only just above half of all the cohort. Had a similar thing happened to boomers in 89, almost 70% would have benefitted.
I think it's also worth pointing out: The share of wealth held by boomers in 89 (why 89? Because they didn't have data before that. It's why the graphs start in a weird spot and why it's not a great study unless you're trying to pull out a "gotcha" stat) represented almost 20% of the total wealth in the country. "Millenials/GenZ" has a hold on only HALF that percentage.
Doctors may hate your one weird statistic, but socio-demographists probably don't...
This is also true for other generations.