CHARTS OF THE DAY: A New "Roaring Twenties"? Not A Chance

We predicted that:

• Millennials would become closer, not more alienated, from their parents.

Done. Retrospective surveys confirm that young Boomers in their 20s hardly spoke to their parents. Millennials, by contrast, often talk to or text their parents several time a week.  The share of young people in their 20s and early 30s living with their parents has steadily risen--even during the recent economic expansion--and is now at a historical high going back over a century.

• Millennials would take fewer, not more, risks in their personal lives.

Done. Take your pick of any risk-taking behavior associated with young people: smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, fighting in school, committing violent crime, not wearing a seat belt, having sex before age 18, starting a business, living alone, moving to another city. You name it--these risks have all been lower for Millennials, sometimes dramatically lower, than for Xers and Boomers at the same age.

• Millennials would practice greater, not less, deferred gratification in pursuing long-term goals.

Done. Earlier youth generations ignored, defied, or opposed the system. Not Millennials. Without complaint they have been scaling the wall of grades, test scores, rankings, and recommendations--and willingly hocking their own future (something not asked of earlier generations)--all just to earn that gold star of establishment acceptance: the college or professional diploma.

• Millennials would gravitate toward more, not less, conformity and convention in the culture.

Done. In dress, Millennials prefer "normcore." In music, every emotion is expressed--except rage or confrontation. In videos, the plotlines are mostly PC, many turned into formulaic sequels in which all the nasty edges are smoothed over. Earlier youth generations celebrated transgressing mainstream norms. With cancel culture, Millennials celebrate silencing the transgressors.

• Millennials would demand more, not less, from communities and government.

Done. In case you haven't noticed, "prosocial" Millennials like to put the adjective "social" in front of everything, from social media to social investing. Where young Boomers and Xers so often fled surveillance by the community, Millennials embrace it, their most dreaded fear being "loneliness." As for politics, Millennials broadly favor the party of big government, the Democrats, by a nearly two-to-one margin. That's the most lopsided Democratic advantage among young voters since the New Deal in late 1930s.

So come on. Do you really expect this generation to fuel another bad-boy decade, another Roaring Twenties?