Generation Grumpy: Why You May Be Unhappy if You’re Around 50<br />So although older Americans have always been far more likely to be satisfied with their finances, they’re also riding a wave of increasing dominance on the income scale<br />and hanging onto high-paying work, keeping some of those slightly younger 45-to-54-year-olds from ascending to those jobs.<br />By 2016, as middle-aged Americans, they were 12 percent less likely to say they were<br />satisfied financially, and 18 percent more likely to say they were unhappy.<br />Back in 1994, when the baby boom generation was filling in the 45-54 age group, a male<br />full-time worker made $1.29 for every dollar made by other male full-time workers.<br />Women in this age group were also the top earners, although female pay was not as<br />disparate; they made $1.13 for every dollar made by other female colleagues.<br />Americans in their 20s and 30s have always expressed a higher degree of anxiety, but this is the first time in the survey<br />that the dissatisfaction has crept so far up into middle age.<br />The Grumpy Middle got to college around the time the drinking age was raised to 21 and were too young to enjoy all of the benefits of the booming 1980s economy,<br />but old enough to have worked with older colleagues who could regale them with tales of how great things were for white-collar workers in the 1980s.<br />Middle age used to be the peak earning years on the job market, but this is no longer true, especially for men.
