# Gen Z is richer but miserable anyway

> A new report finds Gen Z has more wealth and income than any generation before them at the same age, yet they feel worse about money than anyone on record.
- Title: Gen Z is richer but miserable anyway · Fortune | Shortify
- Summary: A new report finds Gen Z has more wealth and income than any generation before them at the same age, yet they feel worse about money than anyone on record…
- Keywords: gen z, millennials, wealth, income, bcg center for macroeconomics, housing affordability, student debt, financial expectations, social media, generational comparison, Gen, richer
- Source: Fortune — https://fortune.com/2026/09/22/gen-z-wealth-income-vs-boomers-millennials-richest-generation-great-expectations
- Author: Nick Lichtenberg
- Read time: 3 min
- Topics: gen z, millennials, wealth, income, bcg center for macroeconomics, housing affordability, student debt, financial expectations, social media, generational comparison
## A complaint from 1866
An 1866 health magazine complained that houses and furniture cost three times more than a decade earlier. The same anxiety about young people and money has echoed for centuries.

> It requires a little fortune, now, to buy a house, and every article of furniture costs about three times as much as it did ten years ago.
## A new report challenges the narrative
The BCG Center for Macroeconomics released a report arguing that Gen Z is actually richer at the same age than Millennials, Gen X, or Baby Boomers ever were.
## The Dickensian paradox
Gen Z thrives by every financial measure yet feels worse about money than any generation on record. It is the best of times and the worst of times.
## Who wrote the report
Economists Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Paul Swartz and Henry Rubin of BCG argue that economic narratives are often false alarms and the data tells a different story.
## Gen Z's income advantage
The oldest Gen Z workers, at twenty eight, earn a median forty two thousand dollars in constant dollars. That is twenty five percent more than Millennials made at that age.
## Gen Z's wealth advantage
Millennials at thirty four carry an average net worth of three hundred thirty one thousand dollars, versus two hundred fifty one thousand for Gen X at the same age.
## Sentiment flipped in 2025
For four decades, older Americans were gloomier about the economy than the young. That pattern flipped around twenty twenty five. Now the young are more pessimistic than the old.
## What Gen Z actually believes
A SoFi and YouGov survey of four thousand ninety adults found sixty two percent of Gen Z and Millennials aspire to retire comfortably, but only forty six percent believe they will.
## Real challenges remain
Student debt is real, city housing is genuinely more expensive, and some Gen Z will not out-earn their parents. But the report says they are still making broad generational progress.
## The K-shaped economy myth
The report challenges the narrative that the rich are pulling away while everyone else falls behind. Since twenty twenty, wage growth for the bottom quartile has outpaced the top in nearly every year.
## Financial dysmorphia
Gen Z said it would need to earn six hundred thousand dollars a year to feel financially successful, the ninety ninth percentile of U.S. income. The median full-time salary is around sixty thousand.
## Social media distorts expectations
The report calls the gap between Gen Z's expectations and reality financial dysmorphia, driven partly by social media exposure to unrepresentative wealth.
## Housing is the real friction
It now takes nearly six years of median income to buy a median-priced home, up from three and a half in nineteen seventy five. But the median new home is fifty percent larger.
## Young people prefer cities
Ninety percent of young people now live in cities and suburbs, chasing housing stock that is not being built fast enough. But this preference peaks in the mid to late twenties.
## Dickens and great expectations
In Great Expectations, Pip inherits a fortune, assumes it marks him for greatness, then spends the novel ashamed of his family. Dickens was not sympathetic to this delusion.
## What Dickens would say
Carlsson-Szlezak says the biggest challenge is distorted expectations. He thinks Dickens would tell Gen Z to strive to be David Copperfield but choose to be Pip instead.

> I think Dickens would look at Gen Z and say they should strive to be David but choose to be Pip.
## Key takeaway

Gen Z earns and owns more than Millennials, Gen X or Boomers did at the same age, but feels more pessimistic about money than older generations, a reversal driven by distorted expectations shaped by social media.