Millennials could become the generation “the richest in history”according to the extract from the 2024 edition of the wealth report produced by the international real estate agency Knight Frank, analyzed by journalists from Figaro Sunday March 3, 2024. According to the cabinet, in the United States alone, people born between 1980 and 2000 will gradually inherit $90,000 billion in real estate assets of their elders, the baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1960. Indeed, according to the study by the firm Knight Frank, over the next decade, a massive transfer of wealth “will happen over time” that the silent generation, namely people born between 1920 and 1940, and baby boomers will pass the baton to millennials. The 90,000 billion dollars in assets promised by the real estate agency should thus return to generation Y through inheritance.
Inheritance: variable data and an unequal lottery
What interests companies is how people in their thirties and those now in their twenties will spend their money. Indeed, millennials are much more interested in the ecological transition than their elders. Knight Frank specified in its study that 80% of men and 79% of women surveyed said they were trying to reduce their carbon footprint. Therefore, the marketing approaches of wealth managers will have to be completely rethought. However, the extract from the revealed report caused a lot of reaction in the American media. The American channel CNBC insisted on the contradiction of the study published by the real estate agency Knight Frank. Indeed, millennials are experiencing economic difficulties, notably because of “soaring rents, rising inflation and student debt”. Young people are unable to buy a house or build solid savings.
For its part, the British newspaper The Guardian in particular ironized on the image of millennials, often perceived as “frivolous spenders”but heirs of “economic scars” of the 2008 financial crisis, struggling to “catching up with the standard of living of older groups”. Our colleagues across the Channel have assured that this wealth announced by the Knight Frank report “will likely be an unequal lottery, determined primarily by the legacy of previous generations.” More simply, it is enough to be born into the right family to count as part of the members of the generation “the richest in history”.