Last week was a particularly bad one for inter-generational relations.

First, on Monday, was a report from Pew with the self-explanatory title “The Rising Age Gap in Economic Well-Being: The Old Prosper Relative to the Young.” Tracking changes in wealth between 1984 and 2009, Pew found that households headed by people 35 and under saw a 68% decrease ($11,521 to $3,662) while those headed by the elderly (65 and over) increased 42% ($120,457 to $170,494). We expect older folks to have accumulated more wealth, but what’s disturbing here is the massive divergence over the past couple decades. The title actually undersells the severity; it’s not just that the old prosper relative to the young, the old prosper while the young flounder.

Although this study isn’t explicitly about student debt, it’s the trillion-plus dollar elephant in the room. The rapid increase in tuition costs can account for much of the decrease in youth wealth accumulation, but not all of it. Mike Mandel of the Progressive Policy Institute had a post in October about the decline in real earnings for college graduates under 35. Since 1999, annual earnings for both male and female grads age 25–34 are down significantly, more than 10%. It’s worse than stagnation.