Those born in 1990 have grown up in an Australia that is more unequal, where those with family support find it easier to get ahead and where significant life milestones are taking longer or have become unreachable for some.
The 12th instalment of the Life Chances report from the Brotherhood of St Laurence explores some of the reasons why.
The small longitudinal study began in 1990 in two inner Melbourne suburbs by tracking 167 babies and their parents over a diverse range of backgrounds over time. Three decades on, participants were interviewed as they turned 30 to better understand issues around economic security.
It found constraints on social security, a lack of affordable child care, housing costs and an increasingly precarious employment market were entrenching patterns of inequality, particularly among women.
Dr Dina Bowman, the principal research fellow at the Brotherhood of St Laurence and co-author of the report, said 30 was a “threshold” age where people would once have their lives settled but were now finding their lives “more uncertain”.
Participants in the study described a general sense that obtaining significant life goals, such as a “proper job”, a home, a car and starting a family, were “taking longer”, and those who did not have access to family help to find their first job or housing struggled.
“For many now, it was like a distant dream. They couldn’t see how they could have these things, ever,” Bowman said. “And it’s interesting to look across the period of changes of the study. It reflects policy changes over that time.
“What we found was there is this kind of implicit or explicit policy change over the past 30 years, there has been an increased reliance on the family safety net.
“This is inherently unequal. Not everyone’s family can provide support as is required.”
Bowman said these trends could be reversed by rebuilding the social security system and introducing other social policies to “even up the odds”.
The Australian National University Prof Peter Whiteford said the study was valuable for “putting real stories behind statistics” and said those born in 1990 in Australia had lived a “very complicated story”.
Born two years before the recession of 1992, and having entered their teenage years during the boom years of the early 2000s, many graduated into an increasingly uncertain labour market following the global financial crisis.
“We had this incredible period of prosperity, but what did we do with it really? We actually gave tax cuts to higher income people and older people,” Whiteford said. “But one of the other things that’s happened is the social security system has become much more restrictive in ways we don’t quite realise unless you have lived through it.”
One study participant, Ruby Mountford, said they were “lucky” to come from a professional family who have been able to give them support when they needed.
The 31-year-old from Preston, Melbourne, was diagnosed with autism and ADHD while at university in 2015, spent a spell unemployed as they worked through their diagnosis and recently started work in LGBTIQA inclusion.
Their job is government-funded, so while they were not living cheque-to-cheque, it remained “precarious”.
“It was difficult for me, even with all the support I had. It’s impossible for other folks,” Mountford said.
“Not only is it taking longer, it’s not as possible to achieve. Everyone wants to talk about merit, but that implies science when we know for a fact everyone has deeply entrenched biases and it’s really hard to change the status quo.
“Most of us are just seeing unchecked greed and corruption fuck our lives up.”
Sarah, another participant who asked her surname not be used, is a 31-year-old from Reservoir, Melbourne. The daughter of a “by the book” boiler attendant, her mother passed away when she was five.
Sarah said her sister first found her a job as a dog groomer at 18 handling clients that included Bert Newton. Today she has a trade, a son, four dogs and no debt, except for the two-person unit she and her husband bought with the help of his parents.
“I’m not lucky. I wasn’t brought up in this world lucky,” Sarah said. “There’s lots of little things people don’t see when they say you’re lucky.
“In my experience, I’ve had really good support. You can’t do much if you haven’t got much. It’s not just going to appear out of nowhere.
“If you’ve got money, you can change things in the world.”
Ruth, a parent whose youngest son is a study participant and who came from a modest background, said while she did not feel compelled to support her children other parents might as they “try to fit into a wonky system”.
Despite discriminatory gender norms when she was growing up, Ruth said there had been federal government programs to support women getting an education and entering the workforce – but now things had changed.
“It did not really cross my mind as a 30-year-old that life wasn’t going to be OK in some form,” she said. “That’s my biggest worry. Where does hope come into all this?
“I just feel the kids now, it’s every man for himself. And all thanks to repeated government decisions – the idea that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, really.
“Society should not give people shoes with no bootstraps.”
