Editor's Note: Below is an excerpt from a recent research note written by our Demography analyst Neil Howe. To access Neil Howe's research research email sales@hedgeye.com.
Out of every ten parents of young-adult children (age 18 to 35), eight are providing them with some kind of financial support. This new Merrill Lynch-Age Wave survey reveals the full extent to which today's Boomer-age parents continue to take parenthood seriously and often jeopardize their own financial future by putting their kids' needs first. (CBS This Morning)
Yes, 79% of these parents say they're providing their grown-up kids with financial support.
More impressive is the estimate by the Merrill Lynch/Age Wave study of the aggregate transfer amount: $500 billion annually, which is more than twice what these parents are putting into their own retirement accounts.
Between 20% and 30% of these parents report paying all of their kids' expenses in the following categories:
- food
- cell phone
- school
- rent/mortgage
- vacations
With parenting becoming such a lifelong suicide pact, it's understandable that Millennials themselves have come to see affluence as a prerequisite to having any child in the first place.
Among the (mostly Boomer) parents whose oldest child was born in the 1970s, only 31% say that "finances played a role" in the decision to have a child.
Among the (mostly Millennial) parents having babies today, that share has risen to 71%.
