A stable job, a mortgage and a handful of expectations separate Arnau Adán’s life from that of his father and mother. He is 25 years old and lives at his parents’ house while he finishes his last year at university. At his age, his parents had finished their studies, owned a flat and had a stable job. “We are the first generation that will live worse than the previous one, at least according to their standards”, he assumes, resigned. The youth context is so precarious that even the average pension of new retirees is higher than the salary of the youngest.
Like Arnau, half of young people in Spain believe they will live worse than their parents’ generation. And despite the fact that they will do so in a context of unprecedented freedoms and social rights, the economic and material difficulties they face mean that the social elevator only works downhill. The effort of today’s young people to claw their way through a hostile world of work places the middle age of emancipation at the tail end of the European Union. While in Europe it is close to 26, in Spain young people do not leave the family home until after 30. “The increasingly later age is paradigmatic when considering whether today’s young people have it more difficult, explains José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, professor of Fundamentals of Economic Analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid.
The job insecurity and the price of housing that young people face contrasts with the favorable context that their parents had. The previous generation, people born between the second half of the forties and the end of the sixties, broke into the world of work in the early eighties: they built their lives in an economic and social environment that was favorable to them.
“We have had demography and the economy in our favor, but we have also had politics in our favor. Since we are the largest group, we are more and more important in the electorate”, acknowledges the economist Conde-Ruiz. “When I was young the per capita income multiplied by two every ten years; now it is practically at a standstill”, he adds.
This generation – to which Conde-Ruiz also belongs – has come to be described as the plug generation, since it still occupies a good part of the decision-making positions of a system that has allowed them to live better than their parents and grandparents, and probably also better than their children and grandchildren. This term was developed by Josep Sala i Cullell (Girona, 1978), high school teacher for 15 years in Norway and author of the book Generació tap (Now books, 2020).
In the political sphere, this translates into more than 30 years of political decisions taken from the perspective of this generation: from 1986 to 2018, all Spanish governments have had a majority of ministers born between 1943 and 1963. The evolution of the average age of the various teams of the Executive has increased by 14 years from 1986 to now. Conde-Ruiz regrets that “political demography is increasingly going against intergenerational justice: young people will become increasingly irrelevant”.
The generational conflict often leads to criticism of the young people of the “glass generation” or “neither”: With 12.7%, Spain is among the European countries with the most young people who neither study nor work. But at the same time, its educational level, with 55% of university students, is one of the highest in Europe.
The sermon to young people is recurrent: “When I was your age, I had a stable job, I had bought a flat, a car, I had a daughter and another on the way”. Whether you choose the partner-house-car-children model or not, the independence to choose your path is impossible to fulfill without the first premise: having a stable job. A real feat considering that 40.4% of those under 25 are unemployed and 25% of young people between 25 and 30 are also unemployed, according to the latest EPA data from 2022.
The context for young people is so complex that the average pension of new retirees is already 38% higher than the salary of young people, one of those eye-catching data that usually stirs up debates about the generational gap in social networks. The amount of those who retired in January is 19,668 euros per month, while people up to the age of 25 receive an average of 14,218 euros. It is also higher than the average salary for society as a whole, which is between 16,400 and 18,500 euros, according to the latest data published by the INE. During the next decade, the number of retirees is expected to exceed 14 million.
A few months ago, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, highlighted this difference with a sentence about pensions that cost her a lot of criticism: “It’s the best distributed salary that families can have” – ??and she continued – “with aid to the son who can’t pay for electricity, to go to the supermarket to buy the five things that the daughter can’t buy, it’s the help that our grandparents give our young people so they can go out at weekends or buy sports shoes”. Around 63% of those over 55 help their family or those around them financially, 20% more than in 2021, according to a December Mapfre barometer. It is no coincidence: 20% of workers under 30 are on the verge of poverty, according to data from La Caixa Social Observatory.
Generational tensions have also been evident in the public debate in recent months through electoral promises by age group. Like the cinema at 2 euros for over 65s or the interrail voucher for young people that Pedro Sánchez announced in the municipal campaign. Or also the universal “inheritance” of 20,000 euros for training and entrepreneurship of young people proposed by Sumar financed with a tax on millionaires.
The generational conflict has a dangerous drift. “Fundamentally, the Welfare State is a pact between generations” and this implies “not only opportunities for young people, but opportunities for the whole country”, points out Pablo Simón, political scientist and full professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid. And he underlines: “The whole social and welfare system is more sustainable if young people are well protected, if they have good jobs, if they are emancipated, if they can have an independent life project”.
In a context that does not facilitate the progress of young people, family help to get ahead can become a differentiating factor. And also in a dilator of inequality, not only between generations, but also on an intragenerational scale. Access to housing is the clearest example: “Inheriting a flat in a small town is not the same as a flat on Gran Via”. Or not to inherit. Almost 75% of households have housing as their main savings asset, Simón points out.
Arnau does not aspire to be able to buy a home, but he longs for a salary sufficient to access a rental in Barcelona, ??one of the cities in the State where it is almost impossible to rent a home on an average salary. “Getting rid of these expectations is perhaps the best way to get on with our lives, even if it’s in a different way.”
