World News

Do We Have It Harder Than Our Parents?

By Bradford Applestein '29 in Spring 2026

It’s hard not to compare myself to my parents. What they were doing when they were my age, how our lives were different and similar, et cetera. But compared to today, how do their lives stack up? I sometimes hear that they had harder childhoods than we did, but did they actually? Let’s look at the data. 

One major difference between young people in the 1990s and today is in universities; many schools, especially the more prestigious ones, have seen a significant drop in the percentage of accepted applications. In 1990, Harvard and Yale both accepted 15% of applicants, Princeton accepted 16%, and UC Berkeley accepted 37% of applications. Last year, Harvard and Yale accepted 4.8% of applicants, Princeton accepted 4.4%, and UC Berkeley only admitted 11.4%. This is due mainly to the amount of applicants rising faster than the amount of slots available for students. Many students entering university also have to take on student loans, and the statistics are surprising: since 1995, total student loan debt has increased almost 650%, in large part thanks to college tuition increasing by 242%. The amount of students enrolled in college has only increased 7%, and the average student loan debt a student takes on is over $39,000.

Buying houses is also significantly more difficult now. On average, a house now costs 257% more than in 1990. This is a significantly larger rise than even inflation, which saw a 152% increase since 1990. The average person is struggling to keep up; the median worker’s earnings have only increased 192% in the past 35 years, and the federal minimum wage has only risen by 90%. This means that a person would need to earn 22.7% above average wages to have the same house-purchasing power as an average person in 1990.

Despite the vast differences between these two generations, we’ve illuminated powerful insights using data. Because clearly, in a lot of ways, we have it a whole lot harder!