Millennials doing better than prior U.S. generation, paper shows

(Bloomberg) — In spite of — or thanks to — the worst recession in the post-World War II era, the kids are alright, conclude economists at the Federal Reserve.

Compared with young adults from the generation prior, so-called Millennials in 2010 were more likely to own homes and retirement accounts and have bank deposits, according to research published this month by Lisa Dettling and Joanna Hsu, economists at the Fed in Washington. With the exception of student debt, liabilities are down for today’s young adults.

While Fed Chair Janet Yellen has pointed out that young adults are ‘‘shacking up with their families and probably would like to be going out and acquiring places of their own,” Millennials are doing better on many measures than either older Americans or their counterparts a generation earlier. At the same time, they may also be better equipped to deal with economic swings than previous generations, the Fed paper found.