Nate Cohn

Only 27% of young people said they had achieved a middle-class lifestyle compared with two-thirds of older voters.

So those are really big differences.

And I think it's pretty easy to explain why young people are much more anxious about this.

They haven't yet bought.

That middle class life.

They don't own a home.

They haven't raised their kids.

They haven't sent them to college or retired.

Older people, in contrast, bought all those things.

Right.

They've purchased a home many years ago.

They have Medicare.

They already raised their family.

While on the other hand, now a majority of voters under 45 say that the cost of having a family has gotten so high that it's become unaffordable.

It's a really good question, and it's one people have been debating about for years now.

I think that it's useful to step back and think about what the economic data we're talking about really is and what it says.

The main measure that people are looking at to say that things aren't that bad is real median income.

That's how much money people are making adjust inflation.

And inflation is measured by something called the consumer price index, which is a basket of goods, everything from food to electronics to childcare.

And it looks at how much the average person spends and how much the cost of that average person spending changes over time.