[dbul]

A shocking data point about how things are going is that the median real net worth for households headed by someone under 25 dropped 68% from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662.

I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]

To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...

[gjm11]

Net worth can be negative and quite often is. Quoting percentage changes for values close to zero isn't very meaningful -- a change from $12k to $5k net worth probably has about the same impact as a change from $8k to $1k, but one is a "58% decrease" and one is an "87.5% decrease".

If there's something shocking about this statistic, it's how small the figure is, not the fact that it's dropped by 68%.