Europe’s wealth gap: Older households eight times richer than young ones
As protests over living costs and programme cuts spread across Europe, under-35s hold 2.8%t of household wealth.
Student protests that began in September in France have spread to more than 11 European countries as anger rises over high rents and fuel prices and cuts to public services.
Many young protesters said they no longer expect to be better off than their parents, and household wealth data show a wide gap between generations.
Across the eurozone and two other European countries, households headed by someone under 35 have a median net wealth of about 25,000 euros ($27,870) while those headed by 55- to 64-year-olds are worth about 208,000 euros ($231,882), more than eight times as much, according to the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2023 Household Finance and Consumption Survey.
“What we’ve seen is actually a very strong increase in housing prices both in terms of the rental market as well as the ownership market,” Evelyn Astor of the European Social Observatory told Al Jazeera’s Counting the Cost programme.