Young are angry at inequity and rightly so

Jospeph E Stiglitz looks at the new generation gap, whereby younger people face an increasingly uncertain and financially insecure future unable to find jobs, purchase homes, or plan for retirement, while older generations, by comparison, have done much better than their parents

SOMETHING interesting has emerged in voting patterns on both sides of the Atlantic: Young people are voting in ways that are markedly different from their elders. A great divide appears to have opened up, based not so much on income, education, or gender as on the voters’ generation.

There are good reasons for this divide. The lives of both old and young, as they are now lived, are different. Their pasts are different, and so are their prospects.