Affordability is a major theme of the upcoming midterm elections.
But not all households are feeling the financial strain equally — and that could have implications for how people vote in November, according to economists and political experts.
Specifically, older Americans are more insulated from the affordability crunch than younger households like millennials, the experts said.
"Affordability is the central issue in the forthcoming midterm elections," said William Galston, a senior fellow and chair of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. "Nothing else is close."
"Who's feeling these pressures the least? Seniors," he said.
Why seniors are 'doing pretty well'
This isn't to say that older Americans — generally, those age 65 and older — aren't feeling any financial pressures.
They're certainly paying more for food, gasoline, electricity and other items like everybody else amid stubbornly high inflation, economists said.
It's also not to say that all young households find life to be more unaffordable.
However, in aggregate, seniors disproportionately own their homes and are less likely to be first-time homebuyers — meaning they're less exposed to fast-rising mortgage rates and home prices, economists said. They generally drive fewer miles and keep their cars longer — making them less sensitive to high gasoline prices and rising bond yields, which have put upward pressure on auto loan rates, economists said.
Most also don't need childcare, a category that has seen prices soar in recent years, economists said.
And an important chunk of retirees' income — Social Security — is protected from inflation via cost-of-living adjustments, they said. The Social Security Administration on Wednesday announced a 3.6% boost to benefits for 2027, a larger-than-average COLA increase.
"You put it all together, and I would say that — especially if you're 75 and above — you're doing pretty well compared to the rest of America," Galston said. "And the people who are feeling the most pressure are young families in the 30 to 45-year-old range."
Young people more 'disillusioned'
Financial data supports this generational divide.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, conducted an analysis for CNBC showing that baby boomers — along with the older silent and greatest generations — experienced the lowest increase in consumer prices from January 2019 through August 2026.
Zandi used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to generate a weighted consumer price index by generation.
Older cohorts saw a roughly 31.5% cumulative percent change in consumer prices over that time period, Zandi found.
Meanwhile, millennials saw the highest cumulative price growth relative to other groups — nearly 2 percentage points higher than that of older Americans, at 33.3%. Generation Z, the youngest adult group, had the second-highest rate, at 32.7%.
"Young people are definitely suffering higher rates of inflation than older Americans," Zandi said. "That comes through loud and clear in the data."
"Younger Americans are arguably most disillusioned as they are facing the highest inflation, and thus may turn out to vote to a greater degree," a dynamic that should favor Democrats, he said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published last week found 78% of Americans said the White House shares blame for higher costs. The share includes 64% of Republicans, 76% of independents and 95% of Democrats, according to the poll, which surveyed 4,506 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
"I think it's fair to say when people are feeling pinched, they look for somebody in leadership to come to them with a solution," said Michael Reid, head of U.S. economics at the Royal Bank of Canada. "I think you'll see some voters turn out and look for whoever is not currently in office as a solution."
Projections indicate Republicans are on track to lose their majority in the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterms, and the Senate majority is "squarely in Democrats' sights," according to the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, which provides nonpartisan analysis of elections and campaigns.
White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton told CNBC in an e-mail that President Donald Trump has delivered "tangible wins" to Americans, including signing a large tax-cut package, which reduced taxes for retirees and workers who get tips and overtime pay, among other things.
Trump is also "delivering on his promise" to stop inflation, raise economic growth, create jobs, "and there will be more to come in the next two years," he wrote.
Housing costs squeeze younger Americans
Younger people spend more of their budgets on housing, which largely accounts for the generational divide in affordability, Zandi said.
Data show that housing has become increasingly less affordable over the years.
In 2025, the monthly required payment for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was about 33% of the median family's income — an all-time high and up from 26% in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, published last week.
This 7-percentage-point increase was largely driven by rising interest rates, and partly because of higher house prices, according to the SCF, which the Fed issues every three years.
Average rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage were 7.4% the week of Oct. 15, according to Freddie Mac data. That's the highest in about three years — since November 2023 — and up from about 6.3% a year ago. Outside of the post-pandemic period, average mortgage rates haven't been this high since 2000, according to Freddie Mac data.
Meanwhile, home prices have outpaced wage gains by a wide margin.
Between 2019 and 2024, the inflation-adjusted median home value increased 30%, from $269,600 to $350,000, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group. The inflation-adjusted median household income for households headed by those under 40 rose only 9% — from $92,700 to $100,900 — during that time, it found.
The only other time when the price-to-income ratio for young people reached its current level was during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, Pew said.
Childcare adds to the affordability crunch
Childcare costs have also risen "substantially faster" than the overall inflation rate, said Galston, with the Brookings Institution.
A Bank of America Institute report published in October 2025 found that childcare expenses are rising 1.5 times faster than the overall U.S. inflation rate.
Families spend about 9% to 16% of their median annual income on full-day care for just one child, and in some cases that cost exceeds their annual rent, according to a 2024 Labor Department report.
Some households can substitute cheaper items for more expensive ones — like buying chicken instead of beef, for example — as an anti-inflation strategy, Galston said. But it's not really possible to dodge those expenses for families looking for a house or childcare, he said.
Young Americans lose wealth as older households gain
Meanwhile, wealth declined "substantially" for the youngest families from 2022 to 2025, while it soared for older households, according to the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances.
Families headed by those younger than 35 saw their median net worth fall 23% to $33,000, while families headed by those 75 and older saw it rise 37% to about $505,000, the survey found.
Stocks have posted double-digit annual returns since 2023, largely on the back of euphoria over artificial intelligence — assets that tend to be concentrated among older households.
The rise in net worth for the oldest age group is "so large relative to younger age groups" that their net worth exceeded that of families that were nearly or recently retired — in contrast with the previous few survey years, according to the Fed.
Older households can leverage the increase in their wealth to support spending, said Reid, with the Royal Bank of Canada.
A JPMorganChase Institute report published last month shows they are doing exactly that. More than 37% of wealthy retirees — people age 65 or older in the top 10% income group — made net withdrawals from their investment accounts in 2025 to support their spending, up from 24.5% in 2019, according to the report, which examined more than 20 million de-identified Chase checking accounts. Those withdrawals accounted for about 15% of retirees' spending, up from 8% in 2019.
"Certainly the younger generations look worse off in terms of net wealth," he said. "Younger households either have to take on more debt to keep their budget or lifestyle the same, or cut back somewhere. And I don't think older households are having to make that choice yet, in aggregate."
Safety net advantage for older Americans
Of course, seniors tend to spend more of their income on healthcare relative to younger generations, economists said.
"They are burdened by much higher costs for medical care and long-term care," said Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of health policy and political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "And the premium for Medicare Part B — which covers physician visits and other outpatient services — has grown substantially during recent years."
Medicare premiums are expected to rise to $209.50 per month for Part B in 2027, up more than 3% from $202.90 in 2026, according to the Medicare Board of Trustees annual report.
Many workers may face a larger premium increase in 2027 for employer-sponsored health coverage and health insurance bought on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
The U.S. social safety net is also broadly "tilted" toward seniors, giving them a big affordability advantage over younger cohorts, said Galston.
Aside from inflation adjustments to Social Security income, older adults who require long-term care have Medicaid as a last-resort backstop in case their financial assets are depleted, he said.
"There, again, there's a safety net," he said. "It's not as though you'll be out on the street."