Also factor in the trend of millennials living at home and declining family formation.
But the main reason for the drop is the collapse of the emerging markets and the fact that China has dramatically slowed down.
Stagnation of income and living standards is probably the leading cause. It's not so great being in your 30's and barely affording to buy a house if at all.
This is a clear consequence of devaluation of currencies (inflation).
It's documented to have happened at least as early as with the romans. The exact same things happened that we're seeing now: people made less babies, rich got richer, the middleclass turned into poor(er), most people stopped being productive and switched to rent seeking (owning land and properties became the goal instead of actually making things or delivering services) and so on.
because the rapid growth has put so much pressure on house/rent prices, healthcare availability, general inflation on prices etc that overall the standard of living is falling for everyone.
That still doesn’t seem like the main issue to me.
Stagnant growth in wages?
Huge increases in costs of housing, education, medicine?
Globalization?
Change in social customs regarding relationships, marriage, etc?
Political shifts?
I think the reason is that productivity/wages have been falling. People want to maintain quality of life and so must dedicate a larger percentage of their time to income generation. This is, I think, directly a result of the declining economic situation.
I blame this mostly on the mortgage as an investment trend. Probably goes back to the 1980's savings and loan crash which one of the Bush brothers had a big hand in.
As I have told people in the past, we are heading towards a new serfdom type economy where either you inherit your property or you are a serf paying most of your income to property holders.
Already I have seen articles stating the US Gov is concerned that young people are not moving to other regions of the country as they did 25 - 30 years ago. They articles indicated people moving is in a slow downward spiral. Another indication of a serfdom environment.
I wonder if the housing market is also impacting this. It is a lot easier to pick up and move jobs when you don't own a house or have kids. It will be interesting to see how this changes in the future.
I mostly agree and would argue it's due to the slow erosion of the middle / consumer class. Advertising-based businesses slowing down might be a leading indicator of a bigger macro trend: the reversion back to pre-WW2 levels of inequality :-/
Childhood poverty replaced by adult poverty. Stock market down a lot over past year due to inflation and rate hikes. Inflation really eroding into buying power.
Not to mention a serious breakdown in the availability of schooling and childcare. This will affect some people a lot more than others, so it should be possible to infer its relative importance.
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