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How lucky – or unlucky – is your birth year? Use our search tool to discover if you or your children won the generational lottery… and why the luckiest year of all doesn’t belong to the Baby Boomers
An interactive tool compares Australians born between 1958 and 2001 across measures including housing affordability, wages, unemployment, mortgage rates, education costs and life expectancy. Its analysis names 1987 as the luckiest birth year and 1973 as the unluckiest, highlighting how economic conditions can vary sharply between cohorts.
The article says younger Australians face higher house prices, larger student debts and declining prospects of owning a home before 30, while benefiting from longer lives. Australia’s median house value rose from about $82,523 in 1984 to more than $1 million in 2026. Life expectancy increased from 61 years for a child born in 1921 to over 84 today, though it dipped slightly after the Covid-19 pandemic.
In short
- The tool ranks 1987 as Australia’s luckiest birth year.
- Those born in 1973 are labelled the unluckiest.
- Younger Australians face housing pressures but can expect longer lives.