Christmases past and future

Memories, whether sweet, bitter, or a combination, are the stuff of the Christmas season. Being already especially given to looking back and reminiscing, I find myself each year remembering the joys of childhood Christmases that were, by today’s standards, unbelievably meager. The material wonder discovered under the tree on Christmas morning would usually consist of fruit, hard candy, nuts, and a toy. Maybe an item of clothing. If the excited child could read, the primary gift would likely be a book. And we were ecstatic.

While some families might enjoy more material splendor at Christmas, most of the ones we knew best were not much different from my family. I knew of no one, even among the better off, who received the ultimate Christmas gift for youngsters, a bicycle. In any case, once World War II kicked off, the government decreed there would be no more children’s bikes manufactured for the duration. For adults whose work justified its use, a new light-weight bike built to wartime specifications, known as a “Victory bike,” might be purchased. It was scaled down, all steel, thin frame and tires, no chrome or chain guard or basket.

With the country struggling out of the Great Depression, families were fortunate to be able to provide even limited gifts for their children. Comparing those long-ago Christmases to those of today, when children are likely to receive iPads, smart phones, personal television sets, video games, and countless other digital marvels, with costs running into the many hundreds of dollars, makes the former holiday, that we kids greeted with wide-eyed joy, seem sad and depressing.

Funny thing, though. In an odd sort of reversal of fortune, the children of the ‘Forties and early ‘Fifties were on the verge of burgeoning personal material advances, while the children of today are not. Research over the past few years shows that of children born in 1940, the first year from which tax figures were studied, 92 percent would earn greater incomes (inflation adjusted) than their parents. Most of those earning less were children of wealthy parents, so they still weren’t hurting.

You might figure that the desperate times of the Depression would account for the low income of the parents, and that war spending and the postwar boom would account for rapidly rising income of the children. But children born in 1940 would not be earning full incomes for a couple of decades; their parents would have been more apt than their children to gain benefit from war spending and postwar bounty, so that seems unlikely to have been a factor. Deeper and slow-growing trends seem more likely the cause. Children born in the latter 1950s, while faring better than their parents, would be less blessed than 1940s children, affected by a slowing economy as they entered the job market.

The slide downward has continued. And it hasn’t involved just the children of a lower socio-economic class but children from all classes. The nation’s Gross Domestic Product has risen steadily, and you’d think that adult children going back home for Christmas over the past several decades would have been able to take quiet pride in the fact that they were doing better than their parents, just as their parents had taken steps up from the past. In many cases you’d be wrong.

The national economy, with occasional setbacks like the recent recession, has improved steadily over the years. Unfortunately, most of the resulting increase in national income has gone to the top few, not the vast majority. Income inequality, reaching levels out of synch with most of our history, has made a few at the top of the heap incredibly wealthy and left most of the rest struggling.

So, Merry Christmas, you who were born in 1980. Sorry to give you the bad news, though. Statistically, you have only a 50 percent chance of doing better than your parents. Flip a coin. If you have a college degree, the percentage moves decidedly in your favor. And if we can ever figure out how to cure the unacceptable degree of income inequality, maybe it will move favorably for everybody.

This story was originally published December 17, 2016 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Christmases past and future."