Geriatric millionaires: why boomers keep getting wealthier
Name: Geriatric millionaires
Age: 61.
Appearance: Comfortable.
It may be old, but 61 is hardly geriatric these days. Yes, but 61 is only the average age of today’s American millionaire, according to Business Insider. Anyway, “geriatric” is its label, not ours.
And a million dollars isn’t even that much money any more. Have you got a million dollars?
Let’s not talk about me. The point is, millionaires are getting older: in 1992, the average age of a US millionaire was just 57.
What’s happening? Are the rich living longer, as usual? It’s more likely it’s just taking them longer to get rich.
I don’t understand. The average age of millionaires is rising faster than the average age of the population as a whole: you’ve got to live longer to get rich in the first place.
Why would that be? The obvious assumption is that it’s actually harder to become a self-made millionaire than it used to be, so a greater proportion of those with a net worth of a million or more have simply inherited their wealth.
And inheriting money means waiting around for someone else to die. Exactly.
Nice work if you can get it. Provided you live long enough to see results. “Instead of 60-year-olds giving to 30-yearolds, it’s going to be 90-year-olds giving to 60-year-olds,” says Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.
My heart bleeds for the late-middleaged children of healthy old rich people, it really does. It’s a problem for all of us: baby boomers now account for half the combined net worth of the US.
Is this another one of those stories about boomers ruining everything? I’m afraid it is, yes.
What about the billionaires? The super-rich present an inflated version of the same story. A third of the people on this year’s Forbes billionaire list inherited their fortunes – back in 2001 it was just five billionaires out of 490.
Any better news in the UK? The number of under-30s earning more than £1m a year has risen to a record high of 830.
That’s encouraging, I suppose. But the over-50s still hold 78% of the UK’s private housing wealth.
Great. All I need to do is befriend one of them to the extent that they include me in their will. And then you’ll have to outlive them.
You leave that to me. All right. Do say: “The concentration of wealth among older generations has worrying consequences for the econ
omy, and for the future.”
Don’t say: “Hi Dad, I bought you a carton of those cigarettes you used to like.”