Generation Debt

by Anya Kamenetz

A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist draws on her research with experts in economics, education, the health-care industry, and other fields to identify the sources of massive debt among young adults, in an account that explores such factors as college loans, poor employee benefits, and threats to social security. 40,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Politics, Education, Money, Business, Finance

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Anya is endlessly curious about learning and the future.

Her forthcoming book, The Art of Screen Time (PublicAffairs, 2018) is the first, essential, don’t-panic guide to kids, parents, and screens. You can preorder it now!

Generation Debt (Riverhead, 2006), dealt with youth economics and politics; DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (Chelsea Green, 2010), investigated innovations to address the crises in cost, access, and quality in higher education. The Test (PublicAffairs, 2015), is about the past, present and future of testing in American schools.

Learning, Freedom and the Web, The Edupunks’ Guide, and the Edupunks’ Atlas are her free web projects about self-directed, web-enabled learning.

Anya is the lead digital education correspondent for NPR. Her team’s blog is at NPR.org/ed. Previously she covered technology, innovation, sustainability and social entrepreneurship for five years as a staff writer for Fast Company magazine. She’s contributed to The Village Voice, The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, and O, the Oprah Magazine.

She was named a 2010 Game Changer in Education by the Huffington Post and won 2009, 2010, and 2015 National Awards from the Education Writers Association. NPR Ed won a 2017 Edward R. Murrow award for Innovation from the Radio Television Digital News Association.

She appears in the documentaries Generation Next (2006), Default: A Student Loan Documentary (2011), both shown on PBS, and Ivory Tower, distributed by Participant Media.

Anya grew up in Louisiana, in a family of writers and mystics, and graduated from Yale University in 2002. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Reviews

[danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was really poorly written. The author does a lot of complaining with very little suggested solutions, and honestly, doesn't argue her case very well. It's definitely an important issue, but I just wanted to slap her to make her stop whining.

[Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone my age will benefit from reading this book, which frames many of the economic and overall lifestyle choices we make in terms of policy issues that have come to define post-globalization America. Manufacturing jobs are for the most part gone or else steadily disappearing overseas. In their place we have an abundance of mostly non-unionized service industry jobs, which for the most part see a high turnover rate and very little long term security (unless you're willing to go for management, which gives you health and retirement benefits at the cost of 60+ hours a week). This leads many to go the higher education route, which used to be well subsidized by the Federal government but since Reagan has increasingly come to be funded by the private sector, which for aspiring students means taking on a massive amount of debt. Good for the already rich, who make even more money off of interest rates and speculation over defaults, but bad for just about everyone else. Add to this equation the mortgage market, in which the already disadvantaged are forced to take on terrible deals in order to house their families, which are then disguised as investment opportunities, and you end up with the miserable state of the country that the new conservatives have been trying to create.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look into the situation behind college and young adult debts - credit cards, changes to the way we pay for college. I'm past this now, but damn did it bring back some bad memories. Paying for college is a ridiculous proposition these days.

I admire deeply Anya's call to activism and admire her for writing a book to encourage people to do just that. There were also a few interesting passages about just how EASY it would be to fix many of these problems, and I find myself wondering what's changed in this situation since the obama administration: did the financial reform bill impact things at all? Has obama made any effort to improve college grants with his much-touted change in POV on education (though little-reported in the press). I don't know. Sequel!

The other thing I found myself thinking was about globalization. It would have been interesting to think about this from a global perspective - global competition, global income rebalancing, and more stories about how other countries handle this (save for the ever-popular Scandinavian examples). It's a weird place to write it, but I feel like there's too much americanizing patriotism in many books like this, and a global perspective always serves to keep a little perspective on things.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was pretty bad. I'm a chemical engineering grad student and have little sympathy or empathy for those quoted in this book.
The author makes a good case that our generation is in severe amounts of debt but much of the blame is on a lack of individual irresponsibility.
Some of the quotes made me even more desensitized to the "victim's" plight:

"Nita barely manages the monthly minimum payments on $10,000 of credit card debt, mostly run up in one summer two years ago of 'being a tourist in my own city,' shopping, eating out, and partying. 'They can bother me all they want, but I cant pull $10,000 out of my ass, as much as I try'"

Seriously...how am I supposed to feel bad for Nita.

[H R Koelling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eagerly devoured this book as soon as my local library ordered it for me. I am constantly contemplating the fate of my generation and I wanted some insight into why I felt we live the way we do. The author verified many of the fears I had harbored about our opportunities and the greed that drives our preceding generation.

We're not out of the woods yet, but at least I know there's other people out there to commiserate with. This is not another Gen X screed about poor us; oh boo hoo. It painstakingly attempts to explain why the Gen Xers may find it harder to reach the same level of financial well being their parents enjoyed.

[Elyssa Gooding · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book isn’t really bad, just outdated and totally written from a place of privilege. I come from a privileged background, too, and I graduated from college in the early aughts, so the info was appropriate for my experience. The stats weren’t surprising, but they were informative. Honestly, it just sucks to enter the workforce during a recession.

[Christiane · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's amazing to me how the new American Dream includes being in debt for something. I teach at the college level and the only constant I have found with all my students is most of them are in debt or will be soon. Although I hope my students finish their bachelor degree, the ideas presented in this text made me reconsider that. It is more important for them to develop a marketable skill, through vocational education, than to transfer to a university. It also made me reconsider my own view toward the benefits a job provides as fewer and fewer companies provide great, let alone excellent, health care. The only problem with this text is that she doesn't cite her sources and include a reference list. I would be very interested in accessing some of the figures she presents so I could enlighten my students on how serious money management is and how allusive the dream of being financially stable is.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative but not the best of non-fiction I've read.

The short breaks within each chapter (maybe one every 2 pages) really feel like they break up the flow of the book itself. Just when a discussion point is really being fleshed out there's a break and a new point is brought up. Somehow I felt that the book never quite flowed from one point to the next but was in a hurry to make as many points as possible.

The writing is solid and very readable. I just never felt that the arguments quite had enough to truly explore the position. Worth reading if you have interest in the topic.

[Paul, · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth reading all the way through. An excellent example of the entitlement trap. It asks deep philosophical questions like "Where did all the good jobs with benefits go?" and such provocative claims as the "impossibility of making a living wage".

Want a job? Start a business.
And as for living wage, ummm, the average income for the global middle class, when adjusted for purchasing power parity, is $6000/year. So shut the hell up about how tough life is on $10/hour. Or else the hundreds of millions of people who live on a dollar or two a day might hear you and come beat you up.

[Sharon Ouderkirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Those who came of age in the 1950s- 1970s in North America had a golden financial age of affordable housing, work pensions, good jobs and reasonably priced higher education. Those who came of age after the 1980s have been left with the bill. That is the basic premise of Kamentz' book, and there is enough truth in her ideas to warrant further review. The large government deficits, for example, will be paid by young people, and those not yet born. DB pensions (the good pensions) are a thing of the past, and I think we all know that university is priced out of proportion to student wages. Kamentz' book was written in the early 2000s, so does not capture the devastation of the 2008 recession and the effects of COVID, both of which made the situation worse for everyone.
Kamenetz does not examine the 'biggest wealth transfer in history' which is set for the next 25 years as Boomers pass on, and their money goes to the next generation. Nor does she give fair credit to the fact that North American childhoods have been increasingly materially wealthy, including her generation (paid for by the Boomers). But these are past and future situations, and the present for university age people is not so splendid. Her tone is mostly fair, but occasionally whiny and accusatory as if the Boomers took all the goods deliberately. The Boomers did enjoy the biggest expansion in world history, but that is the luck of birth, and of course everyone thought it would go on forever.
Despite the fact that her book is seriously out of date (due to the recession and COVID), her basic premise is still valid, and worth reviewing. There are sections where I think she was a little overwhelmed by her material (she was only 24 when she wrote it), and she lacked the perspective born of experience, but nonetheless it is a significant accomplishment to capture these issues. Kamenetz went on to write extensively about higher education, so she stuck to her principled concerns.

[Deenathyalan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the problems younger generation of US and how the higher education programs are not for poor. But this lays out the problems and last chapter alone talks about solution which could have been more

[Lex · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Even though this book is going on ten years old, the information is still relevant to young people today. It was well-researched and started out strong, though by the end I felt it became a little repetitive.

[Clarlie Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful overview of the role of debt in modern times and how it falls on young people.

[Trinity Cottrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other than Kamenetz being really whiny, everything is explain really well. Also this was written for the audience of 2005-2006 but it so applies to today.

[Karl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I really did, yet it's annoying to hear someone constantly repeat "One of the important statistics needed for a proper discussion of this topic are currently unknown." Okay, so official government statistics don't exist yet. Has anyone estimated it using regression analysis in the current literature.

Words, pictures and numbers - all three are required to make a convincing argument in the social sciences.

[Rebecca T Marsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a must read. To me, Kamenetz's big assumption is that education is a social good for society, so society should invest in its students and not overburden them with debt, when they seek education. However, I am not sure that the primary beneficiary of education is society instead of the individual. It's seems to me that most people seek a job/degree that will make them the most money that they can make comfortably with some enjoyment, so the primary beneficiary is the student. But if society benefits from our education in some way, then society should provide better primary education first of all.

I wonder why Kamenetz didn't focus much on students' choice major/concentration. It seems clear to me that paying 20 k a year on tuition for a bachelor degree is worth it, but only if you intend to make 80 K per anum after maybe 2-3 years working after graduation, which few do. Plus, brand name is super important for getting a job these days, in certain parts of the country, but not everywhere.

Kamenetz made a point in asking, "Where did all the good jobs go?" but why not also ask basically who it is that makes a lot of money, and why. (Engineers think they are safe, but that is because lot's of former jobs are done by an engineer now, replaces a handful of workers. And the more engineers who graduate, the less they will all make in the field. I also wondered why Kamenetz didn't dive into the question of why women are going into fields and studying majors that guarantee less income after graduation. Women are blindly flooding the marketplace in the care-fields, lowering wages, or maybe this is the way capitalism treats the 'care-industry', since no one can measure productivity and reward good workers.

Kamenetz also praises countries with more vocational opportunities and serious school tracking, which also tend to have almost-free tuition at universities. But, I've studied at a European university and the quality of instruction and the seriousness of students is not the same as the private IVY league university I know from the US. So, how did the US get that quality, and does paying (more) for education affect the quality of education? I'm not totally convinced that free education is the solution, or that society benefits from my education. If society does benefit, then society needs to pay my loans, or regulate pricing at universities, no matter whether unis want to be for-profit.

[Ridzwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anya Kamenetz is a young twenty-something freelance journalist who has got an axe to grind with the older generation.

She argues that young Americans are being grounded by low wages, high taxes and sky-high housing prices - thanks to a financially irresponsible baby-boomer generation. The gist behind her logic is that our parents have been living beyond their means and now the current generation of adults will have to foot the bill for their gross imprudence.

This may sound like a classic deflection of blame, so to support this theory, Kamenetz wet out to interview several people of this generation. Almost all of them tell stories of despair, desperation and debt from holding low-paying jobs and high college tuition.

Unfortunately these "interviews" are done with supposedly anonymous folks who have chosen not to come forward. As such, these discourses can never be verified as anecdotal evidence. Are young people really getting into debt because of what their parents have done, or its just that they are financially irresponsible?

Nonetheless, the author has highlighted a compelling case that needs attention very soon. Young people today are getting into debt too fast for their own good and something needs to be done immediately.

Overall it is a pleasant read with very little technical jargon. I did pick-up the revised paper back edition with an extra chapter and a slightly different cover. 305 pages thick.

[Kasandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best part of this book is the author's illustration of how common it is for 20, 30, and even 40-somethings to have to take "crap jobs" these days, with the hollowing out of the workforce: jobs that have no benefits, barely offer full time hours (or offer more than full time hours but don't pay overtime), no opportunities for advancement, no educational opportunities/chance to expand one's skill set, and/or contract work where you're called self-employed but really aren't, since you can't determine your own pay rate, working hours or conditions, or anything else except having to be at the beck and call of others who have decided that you're basically disposable, there to be worked to death. The downside: her choice to illustrate a number of stories of young people who borrowed money for school, or ran up credit cards, without any clear idea of what they were doing and how they would pay that money back. I do think today's generation of youth has it harder than their parents did (and I certainly have had it harder, financially, than my own parents), but to garner some sympathy for her generation's plight, she should have focused more on young people who DID read the fine print before borrowing tuition or racking up other debt. Still, a decent read for the younger generation, as well as Boomers who act like all one has to do is "work hard and study hard", and financial success then automatically awaits. That just doesn't cut it anymore, as this book makes clear.

[Dmitry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author has done a great job describing the struggles of today's 20- and 30-year olds trying to find meaning in life, career path, and get a grip of the world of personal finance. The author places most of the blame on the older generations, almost excusing the young people's passive attitude and childish outlook on life. Instead of building on the momentum and sounding a call to wake up and smell the coffee, she calls for more government regulation, student activism on campuses, and the older generation doing something about the situation. Many excuses are given for the current state of affairs. Throughout history, successful people have worked hard, sacrificing immediate desires and today's pleasures for the sake of achieving long-term goals many years down the road. No matter how much is done for a person by relatives or the state, it will never be enough until individuals take personal responsibility for their lives' outcomes. Our society's quest for instant gratification has brought it where it stands today. An individual's life can only be improved to the extent that the individual sets aside childish behavior and rosy-idealistic outlook on life and puts everything he or she has into making a difference.

So, while the book is heavy on evidence of the crisis, it largely misses the mark on the solutions.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book on the recommendation of a professor, and got sucked in. The author graduated from an Ivy league school thinking she was prepared for a profitable career in journalism, only to find out that there was no work for her, and become a freelance author. She was making little money and falling into debt, and noticed that all of the other young people around her were finding themselves slaves to their debt as well. The book explores the financial situations of both college grads and people who entered the workforce without a degree, and especially focuses on people who started, but did not finish, a degree. As a college student with several thousand dollars in loans, the book was eye-opening and terrifying. I recommend it as a tool to start thinking about your own future, or the future of your child, but read with caution: it is easy to get caught up in the book and fall into a spiral of stress about the future!

[Gosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched and well-written account of all the changes in our society that are working against young people and negatively affecting our chances of buying homes, becoming financially stable, saving enough for retirement, etc. This was actually rather depressing, overall, but I think it's extremely important to know what we're up against.

I was particularly interested in the catch-22 of the marriage question. It is financially difficult for most people of our generation to even think about getting married, having a family, owning a home, paying off 2 sets of student loans, etc., and yet people who don't get married are not able to put away enough money to retire on 70% of the time because the state of our economy makes it almost necessary to have 2 incomes in order to attain the middle-class American dream.

I think I'm in deep trouble...

[sleeps9hours · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revealing look at the struggles of GenX.

p95 our new reality is postindustrial, nonunion, service-oriented, highly competitive, highly flexible, and technology dependent. Wages overall have been declining for almost 3 decades, with lower-wage workers falling far behind and higher-wage workers barely standing still. Bernhardt summarized these trends as “stagnation and polarization”.

p151 What is really happening: A massive redistribution from young and future Americans to currently living adults. Our de facto generational policy has been to indulge the present at the expense of children living and unborn. This gives new meaning to “no taxation without representation.”

p158 in the early 1960s, when medicare was being debated, the average 30yo had 40% more spending power than the av. 70yo. By the late 1980s, the ave. 70yo had 18% more to spend than the ave. 30yo.

[Tim H · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author did a lot of leg work and gathered stories from many many young people encountering the problems of this generation. The market for "for profit" student loans and college textbooks is too big and powerful to see themselves end. They survive by bleeding educational hopefuls until the rest of their life is tied up in paying interest on something sometimes as much as a house. Read this book. It will be rehashing a bit of what you may already know but it does give further insight into the trials that this generation is facing and that a large majority are not merely "video game addicted" bums who could care less about our future. There is a shift in the society and we're the ones bearing the full brunt of the burden. That's not even getting into the social security mess either.

[Susan Steed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a review - just a few notes I made:

Dr Heller - look up their research - the lowest attending rich kids attend college at about the same rate (77%) as the smartest poor kids (78%)
In 2000 the gap between whites and blacks in college attendance as 11ppts, back in 1972 the gap was only 5 points.

Law students default on their loans more than most other graduates.

For every $100 lent to students, govt pays subsidies of something like $11 to banks.

Kotlikoff quote "What is really happening: a massive redistrbution from young and future Americans to currently living adults. Our de facto generational policy has been to indulge the present at the expense of children living and unborn. This gives new meaning to "no taxation without representation"'l
Kotlikoff uses generational accounting.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A MUST READ. Although the book is directed at those 30 and younger, it should be required reading for all children and their parents. Clear, cogent and readable, it highlights the plight of our youth who mortgage their futures to go college and then face limited options. It's about bad decision-making, corrupt politics, and a world askew. One paraphrase- the author put $3,600 in an IRA at age 25. If she continues to save the same amount for the next 15 years and earns 8% a year, she will have invested a total of $54,000. If she forgets all about that account and continues to earn 8%, she can cash out at 71 with $1.5 million. Of course, if you are swimming in credit card debt, you can't spare the $$ to put the money in the first place. But read the book. You will be inspired.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

i THOUGH THiS BOOK WAS VERY iNFORMATiONAL AND BROUGHT UP VERY GOOD POiNTS. THE RAViNG REViEWS i READ PRiOR iS WHAT MADE ME PURCHASE THE BOOK. i THOUGHT "WOW, MY LiFE STORY." HOWEVER, HALFWAY THROUGH THiS BOOK, i FOUND MYSELF DiSSAPOiNTED. EACH CHAPTER WAS MORE REPETiTiVE THAN THE LAST. SO, i SKiPPED A FEW PAGES HERE AND THERE, BECAUSE i FOUND MYSELF LOSiNG FOCUS DUE TO LACK OF iNTEREST. THEN, WHEN i GOT TO THE "HOW TO FiGHT BACK" SECTiON, iT WAS ALL COMMON SENSE. THE iNSTRUCTiONS THE AUTHOR GAVE WERE "SAVE MONEY" AND "DON'T LiVE OFF CREDiT CARDS". i GUESS i WAS JUST HOPiNG FOR MORE EMPOWERMENT, OR A BETTER ENDiNG. i WAS EXPECTiNG TO FiNiSH THE BOOK, AND GO "WOW!" i DiD LiKE iT, BUT i DON'T KNOW THAT i WOULD RECCOMEND iT. :o/

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nonfiction 9

This book had some valid points, but I felt like she deliberately picked the worst candidates to interview and that this generation DOES feel entitled. I think that most people could pull themselves out of the desperate situations they find themselves in, but lack the motivation, the knowledge, or just don't care enough to do that. There were many topics that could have easily turned into a whine session, but I think she was a very good writer and avoided that. It was an interesting read, confirming the things I knew and not really increasing my empathy for the things that I didn't know. I rated this book low because of the content, not because of the writing. I would read another book of hers.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The basic theme of the book is that lower-wage no-benefit jobs, credit card debt, and changes in federal education financing combine to severely cripple the economic advancement of people who graduate college in the 21st century. Cool premise, but I found the content to be too anecdotal and the tone to be too self-entitled. I'm also somewhat skeptical of her equal treatment of the job market, student loans and credit card debt as contributors to financial ruin. Also, I met Anya Kamenetz when she gave a book talk at UC Berkeley when this first came out, and she was totally blah and inarticulate.

[Desiree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite the depressing read! Things sure are different than they were when I was college age! I was able to squeak by with no student loans or credit cards. That didn't mean that my degree got me a good job, though.. That is what the author is saying about today's world. The jobs that are available are mostly mcjobs, part-time with low pay and no benefits. Most of them are not permanent, nor do they offer a fast-track to the corner office! Those in the corner office sometimes can't afford to retire, so those good jobs that haven't disappeared from our economy aren't open...

A good book to read before you decide to take out a huge student loan...

[Ginger K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Generation Debt is a necessary read for every member of Gen X/Y (and helpful for older generations trying to figure us out). Anya Kamenetz lays out the major economic changes that have occurred since the Boomers came of age and what that means for the generations now entering the job market. It upset me and angered me by turns, but the best part was that the author offered suggestions for how to get out from under - both individual and group action.

Arguably this is the most important book I've read this year.