this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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They also got to own their own homes.
And affordable education.
And wage growth.
And job availability..
Depends on where you where born I guess? Living in Belgium, my boomer parents never got a higher education because it was not affordable for working class families with 6 or more children. My dad had to go to work in a factory at 14, which was very common at the time. Props to him though, he got a degree through evening classes when he was already married with two children and working full time.
Higher education only became common and affordable with my generation.
On the other hand, while I make more money than my parents ever did, they were able to buy a 4 bedroom house in the 1980s on a working class income, whereas I could only afford a 2 bedroom appartment in the mid 2000s, the tail-end of affordability for housing.
While it's true that I was speaking from an American perspective on a time period that definitely saw different situations in the US vs Europe, I would also say that the experience you've shared shows a similar effect, just in a different environment.
Your father (to his credit) was able to work his way through night school while supporting a family and (presumably) not incurring a mountain of debt.
The notion of working one's way through college is something that was certainly difficult, but also certainly doable in the time when the boomers were in their 20s and 30s. Many of them still think that it's possible to work a part time job while you study to pay your way through college and graduate with little to no debt (and use that perspective to pass judgement on anyone who doesn't do that as lazy).
These days, a part time income may not even be enough to cover books, let alone room and board... forget about tuition. Honestly, it's so impractical that it's probably better for a student to not work and focus on study and health rather than try to mitigate debt through a side job.
This is again a more American perspective I think, which doesn't make it invalid of course. The situation over there where students typically get loans and suffer crippling debt for years after they've graduated is frankly outrageous. Over here though, higher education is government regulated and highly subsidized, and while it's not free and can still be pretty expensive, it's possible to fit it within the budget of most families without loans, and people from families with a really low income are eligible for a grant.
So I'm going to stand by my point that in Belgium at least, education has become more accessible compared to how it was for the boomer generation. It's visible in the statistics too: the number of people with a higher education level is still increasing every year, and younger people are much more likely to be highly educated than older people.
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